Millgram & S. Jackson "The Lottery"

As you have requested I will state my case for a correlation between Stanley Millgram’s Obediance to Authory and the essay “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. Chapter nine of Stanley Millgram’s Obediance to Authory experiments with groups effects on people and their obedience to authority. Millgram’s experiment on the effects of groups speaks directly to the crowd Shirely Jackson wrote about in her essay “ The Lottery “ In Stanley Millgram’s Obediance to Authority he conducts a series of social experiment at Yale university that involve human subjects. The test that were performed show that when an authority figure assured the person controlling the shock level that it was ok they would not be punish for doing their jobs. The result of that assurance was many people continued shock the other test subject up to the maximum allowance. What Millgram wrote in his book said “ without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process “. I intend to make a case that the towns people in the essay “ The Lottery ” we being obedient to the tradition of the town, but unknowingly changing the tradition over the course of time and if one person would have objected to the consequences of the lottery the entire tradition could be changed.

1) In my opinion Shirley Jackson’s essay “ The Lottery “ relates to my selection of Stanley Millgram’s experiment on the group effects of obedience to authority because, the essay focuses on a group of people in a town who obey a tradition. Shirley Jackson does an excellent job in describing the people and the process of the lottery in the essay. These details help drive home the importance of this meeting of all the towns’ people. In Millgram’s experiment three subjects were instructed to administer shock to the selected subject every time a wrong answer was given for a question. After two of the people objected to the shocking, leaving only one person at the controls, that person then...