Blind Obedience To Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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The Lottery is a short story written by Shirley Jackson about a small village of around 300 people practicing a tradition or a ritual where all families are initially represented by the heads of their families to participate in a lottery. The irony of this, however, is that in modern culture, a lottery has generally been associated with good luck or to be more specific, a big fortune. Winning the lottery has, in modern America, been associated with winning a huge sum of cash after getting the right combination of numbers. In the case of Jackson’s The Lottery however, it is the opposite, mainly because of the slightly different mechanics and the fact that instead of fame and fortune, it is disgrace and torture that the winning family and the chosen individual from a specific family would get, as can be seen in Bill Hutchinson’s family’s fate, specifically that of his wife Tessie (Jackson). The main theme that the author of this paper wanted to portray was the culture or practice of blind obedience to tradition, a tradition that was designed to keep the town thriving but is full of irregularities and can even be associated with perplexed compliance.
This is based on the fact (more than just the notion) that Jackson really intended to directly confront the logic and rationality behind certain contemporary traditions. It was …show more content…
This can be evidenced by the fact that Tessie Hutchinson, the person who has been chosen as the winner in that year’s lottery, practically turned on her own flesh and blood. Based on how he put it, Tessie’s survival instinct was pushed to the most shameful level because of her desperate attempt to improve her odds for survival by defying tradition and adding her married daughter to the killing pool, thinking that she would have less chances of being drawn as the winner if all of her family members would be included in the lottery’s second round
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