The Importance Of Instincts In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

People who trust their instincts commonly do what they think is right for the situation. When you are given the choice of what to do in any situation, people who trust their instincts typically make a better decision. In The Lottery, a small town awaits for the annual tradition of a lottery. Typically lottery’s are a positive thing, though in this case you could get stoned to death. All the fathers of the families draw slips of paper, hoping that they will open it to see a blank paper, without a black dot on it. In this years lottery, the Hutchinson’s got the black dot, none of the townspeople bothered to care about the outdated ritual until their own family was chosen. This shows that people should have spoken up and tried to change the tradition. Knowing what they should of done, they stay quiet and let the tradition continue. The lottery shows that you should trust your instincts when things don’t seem right. …show more content…
This told us that they thought that it wasn’t right, but this town still carried on this tradition. In this part of the story they had just started letter J when Shirley Jackson wrote, “‘They do say,’ Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, ‘that over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery”’(pg.4). This means that other towns are thinking of giving up the lottery because of its cruelty. This is very important to the story because this is the first evidence that people from other towns think this tradition is not