Tradition in The Lottery Essay

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Question: What is the author trying to tell us about tradition?

In The Lottery, Shirley Jackson portrays the struggle between morality and the blind following of ancient traditions. A society loses its identity and individuality when they stop questioning the higher power within that society. Without constant questioning, a society will blindly follow traditions without any cause or reason. Rational reasoning and thinking becomes non-existent as ignorance rules the mind. Even if a tradition is a unifying factor for a community, people must not forget the current time period and state of the society. The stoning of the woman as a sacrifice in the short story portrays how a society often blindly follows traditions while ignoring the ethical and moral value in the action.

In the short story, the tradition of the lottery began prior to Old Mans Warrens birth almost seventy years ago. Even if the elderly of the society are said to possess wisdom, Old Man Warren ignorantly and blindly follows this tradition. This society has been following this tradition for so long that the original reason and intent has been lost. Only the act of stoning remains without proper reasoning. Shirley writes that the people had done it so many times that they only half-listened to the directions. This demonstrates how no one in the community uses rational reasoning and questions the traditions. Their blind following of this tradition, as the readers will see, will result in a disastrous end where no one questions the morality of the action, nor do they question the authority in the community. The community has set the date of June 27th when they all come together in a supposedly unifying way, and murder one of their own as sacrifice. The superstitious belief that the society will suffer if the tradition is not followed is also one of the main reasons for this ethically event that the society takes part in year after year.

This community seems to hold very superstitious values. Their belief that the society will not be able to prosper seems like the driving force for the communitys participation in the tradition. When Mr. Adams and his wife talk about how the other villages are thinking about not practicing the tradition or they have already done so, Old Warren calls these other villages, a pack of crazy fools. He believes that the villages will receive nothing but trouble for their rejection of the ancient tradition. This is clear portrayal of how backwards this community really is. Their inability to see the wrong in their actions proves how the superstitious values act as a blindfold for their eyes. With this blindfold on, they are unable to see the immorality of this tradition and they continue to take part of it. They acknowledge the fact that they do not remember the original intent of the tradition but say that it is necessary to continue it. Shirley writes that Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. The children in the society collected the stones for the sacrifices without seeing how wrong it was. The children are growing up in a community where brutality is masked with the concept of tradition. When they are older, they will also not realize the difference between right and wrong. They will also continue to follow this tradition because no one in their childhood had the courage to speak against it. Shirleys presents the idea of tradition in a way where the readers question the morality in the action behind the tradition as they see how the immoral the act really is.