Why Is The Lottery Wrong

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Humans are creatures of habit. When we form traditions or practices over long periods of time, we do not like to go away from them. Humans prefer to create comfortable patterns in life and they do not go away from them. The problem with this is when these patterns and traditions go out of date. It is dangerous to blindly follow traditions without questioning their validity. Traditions need to be examined and not carelessly followed. To emphasize, traditions need to be examined and questioned and not just executed. Without examination and questioning, people will not realize if a tradition is wrong or hurtful, nor will anyone remember why the traditions take place. “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual . . . they still remembered to use stones” (Jackson 5). In the short story “The Lottery” the tradition of the lottery was a longtime practice that no one dared question. The unfortunate winner of this lottery was stoned to death afterwards. This murderous tradition is blatantly wrong and cruel, but the villagers took it as a fact of life, something that just has to happen. This type of thinking is dangerous because outdated practices lead to dreadful consequences. As new information and thoughts are recognized, old ways and habits become …show more content…
Being resistant to positive change restricts others from moving on from outdated thoughts and beliefs. In “The Lottery” Old Man Warner represents this restriction. “‘They do say’ Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner. . . ‘over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery.’ Old Man Warner snorted, ‘Pack of crazy fools,’ he said, ‘Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them’” (3). Old Man Warner symbolizes people who are unwilling to change for the better and to move on from old ways. Everyone in a community must be willing to change from old, outdated habits for anyone to make a

Why Is State Lottery Wrong

played the lottery. People today tend to believe that the lottery is just a harmless game to play at gas stations. However, the state lottery has evolved and grown into a necessary part of the economy. Some would argue that the lotteries vices outweigh its economic significance. The state lottery is ethically right and economically significant. The state lottery has diverged from its traditional origins: It is now a completely different animal from other forms of modern gambling. The lottery is defined…

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The Importance Of Individuality In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

terrible consequences. This is shown in the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. Individuality is what keeps this world going, and without it, nothing about our society or world would be the same. Firstly, without individual beliefs everyone goes through the same thoughts, same rituals, and the same routine over and over again. Nothing is ever petitioned against and nothing ever is argued as wrong. The reader can see this in “The Lottery” when no one questions the lottery’s wrongfulness. “Although…

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Homosexuality In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

The village lottery comes full circle in a savage murder every year, a strange custom that proposes how unsafe convention can be when individuals tail it aimlessly. Before we recognize what sort of lottery they're directing, the villagers and their arrangements appear to be innocuous, even curious: they've delegated a somewhat lamentable man to lead the lottery, and kids keep running about social event stones in the town square. Everybody is appears to be distracted with a clever looking black box…

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The Lotery Essay examples

The Lottery Paragraph In the short story, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson the author tells a surprising story with a twist. The story is about a small village where there is an annual lottery. A lottery is when one person gets picked out from the community and gets stoned to death by the whole village. Jackson uses symbolism with stones and the names in the story the story to describe and show more detail. One example of symbolism is the stones. As the story begins, it is a warm summer day…

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Interpretive Essay On The Lottery

“The Lottery” Interpretive Essay “The Lottery” is a short story written by Shirley Jackson. It is about a small village of about three hundred people coming together in the village square and picking pieces of paper from a black box. One of the papers from the box has a black dot. The family that gets the black dot is the Hutchinsons. All of the members of the family gather around the black box and take a slip each. One of these slips also has a black dot. Tessie Hutchinson, Bill Hutchinson’s wife…

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The Lottery Analysis

In general playing lotteries is the most popular game throughout this world and majority of the people play lottery every day. Lottery means raising money by selling numbered tickets and giving prizes to the holders of numbers drawn at random. According to “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson Lottery is terrible thing. Three of the most important symbols in “The Lottery” are the lottery itself, Old Man warner, and the black box. These three symbols have larger meaning within the story. First, “On June…

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Comparing and Contrasting Young Goodman Brown and the Lottery Essay

Comparing and Contrasting “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Lottery” By: Wayne Gillard II Professor C. Givens ENGL 102-B19 Wayne Gillard Prof. Givens ENGL 102-B19 Essay 1 Outline Thesis: The literary works of “The Lottery” and “Young Goodman Brown” both appear to show the fallibleness of human behavior and judgment. I. Introduction/Statement of Thesis II. Themes and Author’s Purpose a. The Lottery i. The hazards of following tradition or living according to…

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The Lottery Compare And Contrast Essay

The Lottery, a short story by Shirley Jackson, was published in The New Yorker magazine in 1948 as a fiction story. The story takes place on the morning of June 27th, a warm sunny day in a small village of 300 people. The grass was richly green and the flowers were just beginning to bloom. The people of the small town were just getting ready for The Lottery at the town square by the bank and the post office. It was a farming community that gathered every year for The Lottery. Some kids went out and…

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Sacrifice The Lottery

Literary Analysis “Sacrifice is a state of mind in which our thoughts turn towards heaven and our ancestors for something in return,”-Kungi. The Lottery is a short story about how a town has a lottery. Each person takes a sheet of paper out of a black box if you get the black dot you're going to be sacrificed because they think they think they will get better crops if they sacrifice a person. In the story The Hunger Games, about how because of what district 13 did, (trying to overthrow the Capital)…

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Lottery: Sociology and Tradition Essay

Shirley Jackson’s short story ‘The Lottery’ is a very well known story to most. Due to it’s disturbing content and violent situations, most people would be rather scared to continue their read. But, throughout the story, Jackson portrays many aspects of what tradition consisted of and the horrors behind many of our ancestors. The term ‘lottery’ usually, in our opinions at least, sounds to be something good, but as readers know, it is quite the opposite in this story. The characters in the story who…

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