Tradition In The Lottery, By Shirley Jackson

“The Lottery” is an exceptional short story because of Shirley Jackson’s intended message. The message is meaningful in how individuals uphold traditions in their life. The custom that the village people practice is shocking since they stone to death the member in their community who wins the lottery. The members in the community exhibit how their tradition has developed into a meaningless habit. This issue is comparable to the tradition of slavery in the early 1600’s in the United States. The author’s idea in this story was to illustrate how morality can become insignificant and how traditions can become inconsistent when thoughtlessly following tradition.

Moreover, the community’s unmoral custom of stoning a member had developed into a

The narrator explicates that “the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box; they still remembered to use stones” (Gardner 249). The villagers speak as though they do not want to leave the tradition, although the one they practice has no true origin or history have disappeared in time. This adheres to the idea that the villagers’ tradition had undeniable inconsistencies. The stones have become the only thing left to resemble the true ritual aspect the town once practiced. Over the years, even though utmost of this tradition has chipped away, the villagers devote themselves to upholding and continuing it. Realistically the official of the tradition each year decides which rules will be followed and discards those he does not think are necessary. The villagers blindly follow a custom that has extreme threats to their morality and they are upholding something that has no logical background to follow. The tradition continual inconsistence has only left trails of the true ritual and has evolved to consist only of violence that leads to killing members of their own