RR 3 Essays (560 words) - Literature, Creative Works, Fiction

Reading Reaction Reading Reaction on "The Lottery" The short story "The Lottery" takes place in a small town, or village, of just over 300 people that live in it. Although the name of the village is never said, the story does begin by saying that the day of June 27th is important every year to their village. On that day, the infamous lottery takes place where the entire community gathers in town to draw slips from an old wooden box. This box is one of the most important aspects of the tradition and the people of the village usually forget the process of the lottery, but they never forget about the old wooden box. This box wasn't the original box and the current one used to be black, but now it is chipped with evidence of its stained material showing through. There is a lot of chatter among the old men about other towns who have gotten rid of the lottery; they thought it was a ridiculous and nearly preposterous idea. "Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves" (Jackson, 1948, p. 31). It isn't until the end of the story that the lottery is revealed; the lottery is a community event where the townsfolk take turns drawing slips of paper to see who will be stoned. At the beginning of the story it mentions that the children gathered a bunch of stones, but until the end the reason is unknown. The central message, or moral, of "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is that just because something is tradition does not make it right. Leading up to the end of the lottery, Tess Hutchinson began to get worked up because she believed that the last drawing wasn't fair and that it was rushed. Tess exclaimed, "You didn't give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn't fair!" (Jackson, 1948, p.32). Soon after, it was unveiled that that she was the one to be stoned and Mr. Summers, the one who ran the lottery, told everyone to get to the point and hurry up. Even Tess's son had stones ready to throw at his mother. It speaks measures that people will do anything deemed "normal" just because everyone else is. However, just as a mother would ask, "If your friends are about to jump off a cliff, would you?" The typical response is to say, "No, of course not." Is that true though? These people have been stoning people for decades and not one has refused to participate. It is beyond unethical to stone someone to death, but for them it was tradition. To them, if it is tradition, it must be right. "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is a telling story of ridiculous situations in which people do what everyone else is doing to merely fit in. It is repulsive to think that although this is only a fictional story, there is much truth lying in the moral of it. During the time that this was written, there was still heavy segregation between people of different races happening all over. Today it is apparent how wrong that was, but in that time, it was deemed morally fit. There are still many discriminatory situations happening, but they are easily overlooked by those who suffer from ignorance.