People often hold fast to their traditions without having clear explanations of why they keep them. In “The Lottery,” the townspeople carry out a ridiculous tradition that they have no clear justification for other than the fact that it has always been done. They reason that without this ritual their crops will suffer, but they don’t know that to be true. The townspeople don’t really know what will happen if they continue their tradition; they are just afraid of what will happen if they don’t. The fear of change is so great among these people that they are able to keep such an absurd ritual.
The lottery is held on June 27th of every year, right before crop season. Plentiful crops are important to the people of this small town. They rely on the tradition of the lottery for their crops to thrive. Everyone must participate in lo
Throughout the story, Shirley Jackson makes references to the small town’s strong belief in tradition. She mentions the deteriorating black box and how “Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box” (5). The townspeople refuse to even get a new lottery box because they are too afraid to not follow their rituals. Even if a practice is as useless as keeping an old black box, people may stick with it for fear of abandoning tradition.
It seems as if the lottery is a good thing, in the beginning of the story. The author, Shirley Jackson, leads the reader to believe that the lottery is just another harmless tradition, as she compares it to “square dances, the teen-age club, [and] the Halloween program” (4). The characters in
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