In the short story “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, the villagers conduct a lottery every year. The ‘winner’, in this case Tessie Hutchinson, wife of Bill Hutchinson, gets stoned to death. The purpose of this lottery is to maintain tradition.
This is supported when the author describes the black box from which the names were drawn from. She says that the villagers had been using the black box “before… the oldest man in town was born” and that “Mr. Summers spoke… about making a new box, but no one liked to upset… [the] tradition represented by the black box” (Shirley Jackson 46). The villagers are keeping a shabby black box just to uphold tradition when a new box could make the drawing easier or faster, which means they put tradition before
This is supported when the author describes the black box from which the names were drawn from. She says that the villagers had been using the black box “before… the oldest man in town was born” and that “Mr. Summers spoke… about making a new box, but no one liked to upset… [the] tradition represented by the black box” (Shirley Jackson 46). The villagers are keeping a shabby black box just to uphold tradition when a new box could make the drawing easier or faster, which means they put tradition before