Elizabeth McKinney, Collin Bailis,

Joel Luecke, Nathan Kennell

Dr. Kanwit
English 2071
14 November 2012
The Lottery: destroying moral values or encouraging cultural norms?
A lottery is defined by Websters Dictionary as a drawing of lots in which prizes are
distributed to the winners among persons buying a chance. Shirley Jackson writes her short
story The Lottery around this definition: a town participates in a sweepstakes each year, and the
prize is death. The village Jackson describes has traditional family roles that are defied by the
lottery and fail to be changed year after year. The men, the protectors, the women, the caregivers,
and the children, the innocent, all revert to their instincts on June 27th, the day the lottery takes
place.
Among the community, there is an unspoken understanding that the men in the town are
the head of the households and therefore the protectors. The first step of the lottery involves the
men choosing a slip of paper. The family of the man who gets the paper with the black spot on it
then has to draw their own paper. Although the males seem to be the courageous people for going
first, they are actually becoming the condemner, rather than the guardian. When Bill Hutchinson
draws the black spot, he essentially kills one member of his family right there.
The way a family reacts once they are chosen defies natural tendencies. Tessie
Hutchinson defies her role as a mother and caregiver by volunteering her daughter to give herself
a better chance of living. When Mr. Summers asks Bill whether he has any more households in
his family, Tessie is quick to include her daughter Eva, who is married, and therefore a part of a

different household. By having Eva draw with the Hutchinson family, Tessie raises her chances
of surviving. Even the children are ready to give up their parents if it means they will live. Dave
Hutchinson, Tessies youngest son, takes a handful of pebbles to throw with the rest of the
village. He does this because, when it comes down to it, everyone defends themselves. Families
will turn against each other because their natural instincts take over and self-preservation
becomes their only thought.
The tradition of the lottery, bringing them to defy themselves, is a habit that will not
cease to exist because of the way it is presented to the younger generation. It is carried out as if it
is a great honor as well as a great responsibility, and everyone participates willingly in the
majority of the events. The children compete over finding the best stones to throw, and those
who are too young to find their own stones are given pebbles by their parents or other adults.
When the adults, who are supposed to be the role models, encourage the children to partake in
the stoning, they make the children think it is okay to do so. Thus, the youth will continue the
tradition of the lottery, because they only know what they are taught.
The lottery the villagers participate in tears apart their natural family values and will
never end, because the townspeople wont let the tradition stop. The men give up their roles as
protectors just as the women abandon their roles as caregivers in favor of self-preservation. The
children lose their innocence by participating and throwing stones without a second thought. But
this tradition that breaks up families wont stop, because the villagers keep it going simply
because theyve always done it; their children grow up with it, so they dont see any reason to
end it, either. This same sort of mentality can also be seen in popular culture today. Suzanne
Collins wrote the series The Hunger Games, which has a similar plot, at least in the first book:
the villages randomly select two people to participate in a competition in which they fight to the

death. The people have kept this tradition for more than seventy years before anyone spoke out to
try to end it. The villagers in The Hunger Games were finally able to break out of their traditionbased mind set, but the people in Jacksons The Lottery were not able to free themselves.

Works Cited
Jackson, Shirley. "The Lottery." The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. 8th ed.
Boston: Bedford St. Martin's, 2011. 387-93. Print.
"Lottery." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2012. <http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/lottery>.