The Lottery, By Shirley Jackson (1948)

 The Lottery, By Shirley Jackson (1948)

7/10


I think the story depicted the unconscious fear us cityfolk tend to have against country towns.

Countless horror films start with a car full of family members or teenagers breaking down near a small shady town hidden in the woods. The development in this story is not so different with this. The author began the story to be a beautiful countryside town, and slowly unwrapped the horrifying tradition.

Tradition is another important theme of this story. The ‘lottery’ system is described to be a very old tradition followed in the surrounding region. This isn’t hard to understand, since human sacrifice was a very common culture in the early ages of human history. However, most civilizations got rid of such gruesome traditions as they developed. But in the town in our story, randomly stoning a town member is an ongoing tradition.

The lottery could be interpreted as any kind of wrong traditions that people blindly follow. For example, some cities in ancient Greek would vote the ugliest person in town and kick them out each year for decades. Modern society is not an exception, and this story is warning us about our actions. I rated it seven out of ten. (199 words)

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