"The Lottery"

1.) Jackson is crazy. This is a sick, twisted, demented tradition; and for her to not only think of it, but be able to illustrate it in such a blasé manner is frightening. It is almost as if she is smiling while she is writing, waiting for the ending. With that said, I really liked the story, and would really enjoy listening to a conversation between her and the writers of “SAW”, two twisted groups of people.

2.) The story of “The Lottery” begins with a pleasant description of a town of which everyone could relate. The town is assembling for an annual tradition; a tradition Jackson does not reveal until the end of the story. Initially the author describes the assembly as if it is a normal town meeting, with the children and adults all conversing about their daily interests. Here, the children are collecting and hoarding stones, again, we do not know for what. This comfort is interrupted when Jackson introduces a black box to the story which contains the reason for their assembly.
When the box is introduced to the story, the happy-go-lucky attitudes previously displayed by the townspeople have become ‘hesitant’ and ‘reluctant’. Although we do not know what is in the box, we sense that its contents strike fear into the people. Because of this change in attitude and the mysteriousness of the old black box, we know that whatever it contains will greatly change the people of the town.
The title, “The Lottery” suggests that the discomfort of the people continues because they all are involved in this assembly and have no control of what happens to them. When the ceremony is underway, and every head of household is called up to pick their piece of paper, the nervousness begins to increase. The reader now knows that the contents of this paper possess the fate of one or multiple people in the audience. Everyone is trying to act nonchalantly but their anxiety is displayed by their turning of the papers in their hands and magnified with a collective “long pause, a breathless pause” before the papers were opened. It is here when Old Man Warren makes a very odd claim; he states “this is my seventy-seventh lottery”. Considering that this tradition has been carried on for many years, you can suspect that the only way to not take part in the lottery would be either to leave the community, or die.
After Mr. Hutchinson was found to have had “it”, everyone is quite relieved when they discover that they are not the ones. When Tessie Hutchinson exclaims that the lottery was not fair and receives the response that “All of us took the same chance” the reader is ensured that the lottery is not one of luck but rather of misfortune. The tension builds when the final lottery is selected by the Hutchinsons. The collected stones from the beginning of the story are now used to stone Mrs. Hutchinson.
These people carry out a tradition where they kill one of their own, simply because it is tradition. Jackson shows that these people and many people in general, will turn their back on you to follow a crowd. She shows that these people, like many others, have no problem inflicting harm or singling one person out as long as it is not them.