"The Lottery" is a short story written by Shirley Jackson. This story is about a small town that has a yearly tradition, which is always on June 27th. They would gather around the square to take part in the lottery. Someone might automatically think that this tradition is one where something is won, like money or some other possession. In reality, the lottery is where someone is chosen to get stoned to death. Why do the townspeople continue to take part in the lottery? What are some of the reasons for doing it? We are going to find out that obedience is the reason for the lottery to take place every year.
One of the weird things about this short story is that the townspeople didn't seem to be worried too much about it. They seemed like they would kind of take it lightly. For example, when one of the townspeople, Mrs. Hutchinson, came in late, she jokingly said to Mr. Summers, "Wouldn't have me leave m"dishes in the sink, now, would you, Joe?" They were scared to see what would actually happen if they quit doing the lottery, even though it could possibly be that they all secretly wanted to. They really had no one tell them that they could not stop having the lottery.
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According to a Yale psychologist, Stanley Milgrim, "Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to." This short story had a lot to do with just being obedient. They are basically still going along with the lottery because it is a tradition, and the way that they had always remembered it being. Even though one of the main reasons to kill someone every year was probably to keep the population down and keep their crops, it also has a lot to do with obedience. Those townspeople didn't know anything else. Old Man Warner says that he had been in the lottery for seventy-seven years and he thought that the people in the other towns who were wanting to stop having the lottery were crazy.
