The Lottery By Shirley Jackson Research Assignment

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The Lottery
Introduction
The lottery is an American short story that is filled with rather twisted events that make for a good read. It is a story that is both intriguing and reflective at the same time. Reading through the story is easy for the readers to draw parallels between the small village and their ritualistic practices at the square on every 27th day of June annually. According to the story, there is a small village in which every 27th of June every year, they gather at the square and run the lottery which is conducted by one Mr. Summers. He is also in charge of all the civic activities in the village such as the Halloween program, teenage club and even dances at the square (Summer). Apparently this an activity that does not just take place in this village, but due to the fact that there are less people in this village at an estimated 300, the lottery program takes only two hours and people go back to their chores. The program requires that the children collect the stones which they then place in a pile at the square, after which the families gather at the square. Mr. Summers comes in with a black box, from which the family heads are supposed papers slips (Summer). It is from this box that Mr. Hutchinson draws the paper with the black dot but his wife, Tessie protests and she is given another chance and this time she draws the paper. She then draws the paper with the black dot and is killed through stoning.
This is a story that is quite ironic and one that points to some very twisted themes. At the same time, it is a story that easily relates to the society on quite a number of levels. There are two competing ideas that relate to the story; one being that the people in the village were brain washed and the second one that states that they were simply cold blooded killers who were thirsty for blood. The two schools of thought speak to the readers from a rather intricate point of view. On one hand one of the school of thought relates the element of the villagers gathering in a ritual that exalted impunity. On the other hand, is the idea that people of the community are simply cold blooded killers. An evaluation of the custom does not justify the means within which the end the lives of the people that are chosen. This points to a tradition that serves no purpose yet one that the people have stuck with and use to justify the meeting and brutal killing of their fellow neighbors. There is a strong indication that the custom has rendered people in the community to have no love between them, an aspect that is still debatable. This is with reference to whether the people in the small community did not have love for one another and thus developed a custom that indicates the same, or that the custom foreshadowed the lack of love that later developed with the perpetration of the heinous acts in the name of tradition. It is however, clear that, the people in this society are blood thirsty killers and use the custom at the square to further their innate ideas and obsessions that serve no purpose other than ritually kill their fellow neighbors. Interestingly there are parallels to be drawn from the story, with close reference to the current society and specifically to the incarceration programs in the nation.
Literature review
There are quite a number of scholars that have revisited the story, with diverse opinions on the moral of the story and how best to understand what the writer was trying to indicate to the readers. It is this diverse views that make understanding the story quite interesting and bring on board a variety of arguments to further the theme development and debate in the story. It is clear that, most of the people in this society did not have the love for one another as it would be expected foe a closely knit society. As Coulthard, indicates in article Jackson’s The Lottery, the story depicts a society that did not have any love towards those they lived with (Coulthard). Instead they were blindfolded into following meaningless traditions that further exalted their blood thirst tendencies. According to Coulthard, it is crucial to note that the people in the society were not mindless, but rather indicates the nihilistic parable of the evil capabilities that are imprinted in the human nature (Coulthard). This is a with reference to the way that they attack and kill their neighbors in manner quite detached and disturbing. In the article An old Testament Analogue for "The Lottery, by Gibson, there is a further insight into the inherent evil portrayed in the story (Gibson). In this article, Gibson brings on a different approach, where the article relates to the meaningless element of moral standings in the society (Gibson). In this case, the mere existence of the lottery program renders all the morals that the people may have had useless. In a rather twisted approach on the analysis of the story, Moss and George in their article, The Lottery, point to the historical events that took place in the society, especially with reference to all the atrocities that have taken place in history (Moss and George). There is a close resemblance to the way people have inherently treated others that are different, in most of the cases killing them in the most brutal way that they could fathom in the name of an ideology (Moss). This further affirms that, while the story may seem to portray a grim picture of the characters, there direct relations in the actual society that indicate the level of vile evil that is within the human race and has been for the longest time (Gibson). This is an idea that is further expressed in the article Arbitrary Condemnation and Sanctioned Violence in Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery” by Shields (Shields). In the article, the author refers to the capital punishment programs in the nation and the fact that they do not serve any purpose other than ...