The Lottery Central Idea

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The Lottery Central Idea Analysis
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a short story in which a small village commences their annual tradition of pulling out pieces of paper, and the villager who pulls out the piece of paper with the circle on it gets stoned to death. Other villages are questioning and eliminating the tradition, while the village the story focuses on is holding steadfast to their tradition.
“The Lottery,” through it’s use of the villagers superstition, and the villager’s stone cold attitude towards the stoning, explores the dangerous effects of blindly following tradition.
Jackson uses the villager’s superstition to show why these villagers continue to the lottery without evaluating it’s merit, and the horrible effects that their superstition has. In the story, Old Man Warner, a stubborn old man who is not stubbornly attached to the lottery said, “Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, Corn be heavy soon.’ First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns.” (Jackson 684). Old Man Warner is superstitious and has been saying that old wives tale his entire life. His …show more content…
The villagers are not giving cold blooded murder a second thought because they hear constantly that it keeps the crops growing, and without it they couldn’t eat. Even with the victim being a friend to many of them, they carry out the stoning anyways. “Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. “It isn’t fair,” she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head.” (Jackson 686). The villagers nonchalantly stoning one of their own emphasizes the atrocities that man can commit in the name of

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