Purpose Of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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The Purpose of the Lottery
In the short story, “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, a small village has an annual gathering in which there are two rounds to determine which villager will “win” the lottery. Every year, there’s a black box taken to the town square filled with slips of paper--and one marked. The villager who chooses the marked paper “wins” the lottery, and loses their life to save more corn crops. But over the years, the town isn’t trying to save more crops for themselves--it became nothing more than a heartless tradition.
To begin with, the lottery began as a human sacrifice to bring an ample amount of corn crops. Every year when the villagers gather in the town square, there’s always a rusty black box that encloses all the slips. The black box has had a symbolic presence in the lottery, and has been a part of lottery for a long …show more content…
Summers, the head of the lottery, tries to convince the other villagers to change the black box; but the villagers are afraid to change any details at all. For example, the text states, “No one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by a black box,” (pg.16 line 75-77). The villagers are fearful of what might happen to let go of any part of what has started in the past. Once Tessie, a villager who “wins” the lottery, is about to lose her life, she finally begins to realize their tradition is meaningless and unfair. She cries, “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” (pg.28 line 430). In the past lotteries, the villagers besides the one being stoned all looked at it as a normal routine. But, when Tessie gets chosen, her perspective of the lottery completely changes—and says that continuing the lottery isn’t just. Furthermore, as the Hutchinson family are collecting their slips from the

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