Shirley Jackson Human Nature

Another message that Jackson illustrates is the blind following of tradition and how that can be a terrible thing. All the members of the community participate in this horrible act because it is a tradition. The people believe that if it is a tradition it then the lottery must not be a bad thing. When Old Man Warner heard that some communities had stopped the lottery he called them a “pack of crazy fools.” He said, “There’s always been a lottery.”(247) Jackson shows how a tradition can be so brutal yet everyone will go with it because it’s in fact tradition. To go against tradition would be to go against the community, so no one is willing to do that. Jackson shows the long running tradition when the black box that is used to hold the slips of paper never changes. It shows the inability for change in the community.

Being the oldest community member, Mr. Warren is the only character in the story who displays any sort of connection to its original intent. The younger members of the community carry out the ritual in a detached manner. In addressing the difference in attitude between Mr. Warren and the other community members, A.R. Coulthard contends that, “Old Man Warner is usually taken to be the most allegorically evil devotee of custom, but he is merely the most honest”. Old man Warner is the only community member that still wants to do the lottery for its original purpose. He believes a sacrifice will bring a good harvest, while “the others are willing to risk their own life for the sheer pleasure of an unpunished annual killing” (Coulthard, A.R.). This leads readers to question whether human nature is inherently good or bad, a theme which Jackson explores through “The Lottery”

Coulthard describes the attitude of the villagers like this: “the others are willing to risk their own lives for the sheer pleasure of an unpunished annual killing” (226). The fact that they are risking their lives for the lottery ritual pushes the nature of it from simple meanness to sadistic malice. The failure to remember the real reason for the ritual has caused this shift in human nature and motive. The ritual of the lottery should have been discontinued at this point because no real reason exists for it.

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a story littered with warnings and subtext about the dangers a submissive society can pose. While the opening is deceptively cheery and light Jackson uses an array of symbols and ominous syntax to help create the apprehensive and grim tone the story ends with. Her portrayal of the town folk as blindly following tradition represents the world during World War II when people’s failure to not mindlessly accept and heed authority lead to disastrous consequences. . Shirley Jackson uses a large array of techniques to help convey the idea that recklessly following and accepting traditions and orders can lead to disastrous consequences.

“Even thought the black box lost its meaning they still remembered to use stones”(Griffin8). The villagers remembered the negative and not the positive in the ritual. The villagers don't think about others just themselves. Griffins statements can be used to state my claim about cruelty behavior. Their main arguments can be used in my essay towards authority and violence. Griffins article talks about how the villagers are being brought down by Old Man Warner and continues the tradition and converting it to violence. Instead of standing up to Warner and protesting that is not right to treat human beings as a form of assumption in sacrifice in order for crop growth to

Old Man Warner is the epitome of the lottery and its tradition. He is the oldest man in town, having participated in seventy-seven lotteries total. As a steadfast advocate for keeping things exactly how they stand and someone who is threatened by the idea of change, he distinguishes all the towns and the young people who have stopped pursuing the lottery as a “pack of crazy fools” (Jackson, 27). He is trapped within the past traditions, even if they should not sustain. Being the antagonist, Old Man Warner does not veer away from the tradition, even though many others do not agree with it.

The village seems rather uncivilized and immoral in contrast to the modern, Western world. Their ritual stoning of an innocent person shocks the reader and immediately changes our perspective on the village. Jackson doesn’t clarify the purpose of the lottery, but Old Man Warner mentions that there “‘[u]sed to be a saying about “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon”’” (Jackson 4). From this saying, we can deduce that the villagers once believed that a

With the historical proximity to World War II, specifically events surrounding the Holocaust, I think Jackson is commenting on the threat groupthink poses to a population. In the story, the town seems content with the lottery, even though it results in something humans tend to be fundamentally opposed to. Additionally, while talking to Mr. and Mrs. Adams, Old Man Warner actively demonizes the towns that have decided to abandon the lottery. In psychology, groupthink generally consists of collective rationalization of actions, such as stoning people to death when they have done nothing to deserve it, and direct rejection of dissenters, like Old Man Warner's words about the other towns. The Lottery represents a textbook example of groupthink,

The people of the town were so unbendable when it came to their humble tradition that they did not even bother to question the reasoning behind the tradition. All they needed--perhaps all they wanted--was the comforting assurance that it had been around for a long time and would continue to be as long as they lived. People are far less willing to break traditions that have established themselves than traditions that have just begun. It is as if longevity is placed upon a golden pedestal, unable to be touched by the hands of human beings. It is a mandatory fact of human existence that the status quo must be questioned, for the majority of eminent men in centuries past have said or done things which no one will now justify. The villagers should have questioned the beliefs of their town in order to rectify the wrongs of years past.

According to Fromm, “Human history began with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.” (362). Jackson’s short story gave examples of how humanistic conscience and obedience can affect people’s actions. Obedience in this short story is demonstrated on three different levels as well having an overall obedience to the tradition or belief they have as a community. The townspeople in “The Lottery” act the way they do because the lack of humanistic conscience.

Because of its prominence in American culture, Jackson uses family as a centerpiece for the villagers and the lottery. All members of the families in the village are present for the lottery unless they are sick or injured, but the children play separately from the men who are separate from the women initially, but they all come together later in the day. This cycle is characteristic of American families during the 40s because each member had their responsibilities but had a cliche gathering for dinner when everyone was happy together. For the actual lottery, Mr. Summers draws a family name, and then the head of the family has to randomly select the name of a member of the family to be stoned. Using a family member to choose who will die is an even stronger corruption of the ideal held during Jackson’s time. After Mrs. Hutchison's selection, everyone, including her son, picks up stones and swarm her. A young child murdering his mother is shocking, but the fact that the community and his own family condone it is possibly even more wicked. Although it was not a common occurrence in American society, Jackson may be referencing indoctrinated children in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union reporting them for illegal activity resulting in their death. In “The Lottery,” Jackson uses this shift from a picturesque description of the Hutchison family to a twisted version to show the flaws that

First, obedience of the villagers to gather in the square for this ceremony plays a large role in “The Lottery”. The story begins on “the morning of June 27th [and] was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green” (Jackson 139). The people gather around casually in the square and are laughing, talking, playing, and not overwrought about the ceremony. Jackson portrays the lottery, at first, as a positive, pleasant gathering of friends. The obedience of the people to just gather in the square and know what is going to happen says a lot about their characters. Since this lottery is something that

In Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery”, it can be very dangerous to follow traditions blindly without knowing about the horrible consequences. When one follows traditions and laws and never questions or seeks to understand the reason for them, the inevitable outcome often brings sorrow. Indeed blind devotion to complying with rules that destroys the human spirit by removing choice, and continuing rituals with dark consequences, and punishing anyone who objects to following tradition. Complying with rules that helps lead to destroying the human spirit is dangerous because individuals should always have the choice to follow those rules. The blind devotion of the village participating in the town’s yearly lottery is the clear example why all rules aren’t always positive. Rituals can be looked upon as positive but they also can have a negative connotation when they lead to dangerous consequences. The village in the story has a ritual every year to hold a lottery, where the winner is stoned to death and this is a clear example how a ritual can be viewed negatively. Traditions are beliefs passed down between generations of a family or culture. They are things we do by choice because they are enjoyable and meaningful for the people involved. Traditions in the story have a dark side to it because the tradition in this village is to kill one of members of the village using a lottery system. The dark side of “The Lottery”, is substantial with many down falls of

This mentality serves as the reason for the lottery being held in the first place. The people of the town participate in the event because everyone else is present in the event. People regard this as a tradition that has to be conserved. Once someone is chosen to be killed, every other including the family members goes against the person. “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (543).

Furthermore, the people in this story were attached to the tradition for the wrong reasons, aside from the fact that they did not know the reason it was put in place decades before, they were scared to change the norm of their town because they did not know anything different. No one in the town dared to question the tradition, except for the younger generation. “They do say,” Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, “that over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery” (Jackson, 4). The social hierarchy that Jackson implicitly represented was also relatable to the one in the war. Mr. Summers was represented as the conductor of evil, the one who continued and forced the tradition on others because it did not affect him