The Lottery Mentality Analysis

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” begins in a small town of 300 and on the 27th of June the townspeople assemble once a year for the lottery. Mr. Summers conducts the lottery and places an old worn out black box that’s older than all citizens on a stool, which contains slips of paper. Detailed list is made of each family, Mr. Summers takes note of the ones unable to attend and the lottery begins with the head of each household taking a slip of paper. They check their slips of paper and the one who has the special slip, that family is singled out, and every member of that family has to come up, select a slip of paper, and the one with the black dot on their slip is stoned to death by their own family and the townspeople. In the world today, people tend to follow the crowd without questioning anything just to belong and in the short story “The Lottery”, the citizens fall into mob mentality. It can be seen throughout the village as …show more content…
The citizens don’t even remember much of the tradition or why they even participate. It says towards the end of “The Lottery” that “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.” When Mr. Summers tells the oldest man in the village (Mr. Warner), “that over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery”, old man Warner say’s there a “Pack of crazy fools”. As someone else acknowledges that some villages have already quit doing the lotteries, Mr. Warner calls them fools too and says it’s nothing but trouble to discontinue the lottery with no good explanation as to why the village should continue this tradition, but nobody questions him and the lottery continues. In the end when Tessie Hutchinson was desperately trying to convince the citizens it was not fair Mr. Warner says “come on, come on, everyone”, and everybody including her family went along with the tradition and stoned her to