The title alone, “The Lottery,” used by the author as possibly an illusion to fool the reader that everything is not only okay but great. Perhaps the author purposely intended to mislead the reader, allegorically illustrating society’s blind-eye towards the subordination that women have always faced and the normalcy that has been prescribed to it. At the end of the story, the beautiful day suddenly turns dark and deadly following an age-old tradition of the lottery, the winner is stoned to death by the entire village of about three hundred people, and even the children participated. The author cleverly displays, through the characters and the text, the stereotypes of gender representation, and people’s disinclination to violate the rules of tradition, no matter how illogical the rules may be. Throughout the story, the author illustrates the separation between the male and female roles in society. At the beginning of the story, the people of the village began to gather in the town square to draw for the lottery; the children were the first to arrive. The young boys gathered rocks while the girls “stood aside” watching them. And it wasn’t until one boy, Bobby Martin, who stuffed his pockets with stones leading the other boys to do the same, possibly hinting to people’s eagerness to do what others do and that traditions are socially constructed starting from a young
The title alone, “The Lottery,” used by the author as possibly an illusion to fool the reader that everything is not only okay but great. Perhaps the author purposely intended to mislead the reader, allegorically illustrating society’s blind-eye towards the subordination that women have always faced and the normalcy that has been prescribed to it. At the end of the story, the beautiful day suddenly turns dark and deadly following an age-old tradition of the lottery, the winner is stoned to death by the entire village of about three hundred people, and even the children participated. The author cleverly displays, through the characters and the text, the stereotypes of gender representation, and people’s disinclination to violate the rules of tradition, no matter how illogical the rules may be. Throughout the story, the author illustrates the separation between the male and female roles in society. At the beginning of the story, the people of the village began to gather in the town square to draw for the lottery; the children were the first to arrive. The young boys gathered rocks while the girls “stood aside” watching them. And it wasn’t until one boy, Bobby Martin, who stuffed his pockets with stones leading the other boys to do the same, possibly hinting to people’s eagerness to do what others do and that traditions are socially constructed starting from a young