Analytical Essay on “the Lottery”

Analytical Essay on “The Lottery”

Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” stimulates and provokes many controversial issues. Her short story is very comical and ironic, which shows the underlying message of evil in the human race. “The Lottery” displays the out dated tradition of stoning one lucky randomly drawn person from the community. The short story is about following tradition and in this case the tradition is stoning a innocent person to death. The lottery in the community is something kind of like a sacrifice because a person gets stoned to death by the rest of the people in the town. “The Lottery” has a main theme of tradition, but tradition can be good or bad and in this story it is bad.

“The Lottery” is set in a small town where tradition is everything. Tradition is a primary theme of the story. The entire short story is set around the tradition of the town. Most people have one tradition they demonstrate once every year or so like some people bake a certain pie because the recipe has been passed down throughout generations of their family and it is the tradition to bake it every Christmas. In “The Lottery” the tradition of stoning someone to death seems like an unruly punishment and an archaic tradition in the town. The people are just following the rules of what has been happening since the town was created. This theme of tradition arouses the idea of why is this a tradition in the town and why doesn’t someone stand up and revolt against it? The town’s people do not disagree to the stoning they participate in it. The people of the town are following such a violent tradition and not thinking of the negative consequences of the lottery itself. Why would they follow and keep a tradition that is so horrendous? The tradition needs to change, but the town’s people know nothing different then having an annual lottery. Old Man Warner says, “Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves… There’s always been a lottery.” The...