The Lottery

When people hear of lotteries, most would envision grand prizes of a few hundred thousands of cash prize, a plasma television, a trip to Las Vegas and many other luxurious prizes. Most people would want to earn lotteries, but is it the case in "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson.

In the lottery in "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, villagers draw lots for their family. Then, the family who got the unlucky lot, everyone in the family would then draw lots. The one in the family which drew the unlucky lot would be stoned to death by other villagers as a tradition. This is so ironic as in my above paragraph, lotteries are meant to be good things and people who win it would be very happy. It is so much different in the story.

This tradition of those villagers was started off from a superstition that if they do so, they would have good harvest. Making someone die so painfully just for your own needs, I do not think it is fair. Moreover, this superstition might not even be true.

Are all traditions bad? If it is so, then giving angbows to other people would be bad too. Giving gifts during Christmas it bad too. To me, I feel bad traditions as those which involves injuring humans no matter physically or emotionally. Like in "The Lottery", it involved injury and even death to the villager who was unlucky to get chosen.

This lottery is very cruel. The villagers can actually be evil enough to stone someone who was living with them for so many years to death just for good harvest. This tradition might not even be true. As years pass by, the villagers would become more and more cold-blooded. They become inhumane. They become barbarians.

Another irony is that one of the villagers said that the village near them wanted to abort the lottery. What he said was that "next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves." This is ironic because the lottery is as savage and barbaric a ritual as any practiced by cave dwellers. He is criticising himself and his whole village without knowing it. They are so barbaric and they do not even notice.

Speaking of barbarians...A little off topic...so...
I have created a facebook group called Monsters VS Aliens. Join it and invite all your friends...:):D:P Look forward to as many people in this group as possible. Let's make it the most popular group on facebook. Yeh!! I am using propaganda techniques...

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