Traditions In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery is about a tradition where the villagers must make a sacrifice in order for their crops to have a good season. Tessie Hutchinson picks the slip of paper with the black coal mark in the center and she is the one to be sacrificed which means the villagers, even her family, must stone her to death. The theme of this story is that traditions can be good or bad. Traditions can result in lots of different scenarios. Tessie wins the lottery and she gets stoned which results in a bad scenario. The crops are good and heavy which is a good scenario. Traditions like in the Hunger Games are similar, 23 innocent children die every year which is a bad scenario but the winner has riches and never has to worry about falling below the poverty level again which can be considered good. This shows that traditions can result in lots of different scenarios because it shows some examples of the possible scenarios things can result in. Some traditions can cause harm, while others can bring people joy. Tessie gets killed which causes harm, but …show more content…
The other villages are giving up the lottery and the people are arguing about whether or not they should give it up too. “Some places have already quit lotteries”, Mrs. Adams said. “Nothing but trouble in that,” Old Man Warner said stoutly, “Pack of young fools.” The people are pulling apart from each other here. But when people have family gathering traditions it pushes them together. This proves that traditions can be a push pull factor among people. The Lottery can teach people a very valuable lesson about traditions. Traditions can be good or bad dependent on how you look at it or depending on the different aspects of the tradition itself. In this story the tradition has good parts and bad parts. The lesson here is that no matter which way you look at something it can have good sides and bad sides depending on how you look at it even

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