The Trials of Changing Tradition in Shirley Jones´ The Lottery and Hernard Tellez´s Lather and Nothing Else

Tradition is an answer to how peoples live their lives. For many it is a social norm, how they have lived culturally for several generations. Despite the significance of tradition in many societies, it’ can still be very harmful to the people involved. Tradition doesn’t necessarily have to have a positive feature for many folks. In the end tradition could cause more harm than it is meant for good. Thus it is really important to change traditional values of communities to improve the quality of life for many people. In the short stories “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and “Lather and Nothing Else” by Hernando Tellez tradition can be shown to be very submissive, that is stopping people from making any changes in ending harmful traditional practices. It is also noted that the act of change merely isn’t over within a fortnight. The act of changing tradition is a long process that will yield in positive results for everyone but is too painful for many to accommodate properly.

Ending tradition is a slow process. It can also still cause harm during the process. As seen in the story “The Lottery”, the villagers of the story briefly compare themselves to other villages that have stopped their practices all together. The villagers refuse to change despite the other neighboring villages themselves doing so. To them their tradition of the lottery is a social norm that can’t be changed. At all It is one of the few things familiar to their village that has been with them for a long time, even when the “original paraphernalia had been long lost” the villagers still continue to follow their tradition of picking a victim and stoning them to death (Jackson). In their mind this traditional practice is completely normal, fair and for the greate...

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...ined within society from the beginning, like the story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. The familiarity is very comforting to human beings’ that is very hard to give up, since traditional practices are something that people are very familiar too. Unfamiliarity is a very scary experience to any one and it can be extremely overwhelming to the individuals involved due to not knowing a single thing that is currently happening around them, things that aren’t in their control. Submissive people themselves are also very difficult to deal with when attempting to change society since the people themselves are key to changing traditional practices that could cause great harm, which itself was explicitly evident in “The Lather and Nothing Else” by Hernando Tellez. In the end tradition is very hard and difficult to change due to the harmful and terrifying obstacles involved.