Gender In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson exemplifies how the annual stoning enables the otherwise rational humans in the town to make scapegoats out of their peers. Jackson accomplishes this through the actions and descriptions of the characters throughout the story, including the roles of the women in the community, which demonstrates how those who have less power are typically targets for scapegoating. Additionally, the village elder, Old Man Warner, serves to demonstrate how humans are capable of associating events that are not related, which leads to illogical conclusions. Furthermore, Mr. Summers shows the ability of even the most progressive people to murder their own peers, due to the effect of being in large groups. Jackson finally incorporates the Delacroix family into the story to show how simple it is to taint the …show more content…
Not only are the women not able to draw for their family, they are so subservient to men in this town that their husbands are in charge of reading the papers that decide their own fate, which additionally proves how powerless this culture renders them. Although it is true that the men had as much of a chance as the women of drawing the piece of paper with the black dot, the fact that in the specific year of the lottery the story takes place the woman draws the deadly slip emphasizes how women are viewed as the lesser sex. In the same way, those who held less influence in society have historically been victims of the practice of scapegoating, where the sins or misgivings of others were placed on certain groups of people. In his book about the practice of scapegoating, Charlie Campbell “recognizes that women have always been among the most popular targets for scapegoating” (Morris 2), clearly due to the “sexual power women have over men” (Morris 2). Oftentimes, the sexual crimes of men have been blamed upon women, simply because of the immense effect that lust can have on a male’s mind. Given that societies of old lacked a basic