Gambling: Addicted to Stoning

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, was written in 1948 back when the time was at recovery from World War II. Gambling has always been a problem in the United States, because of the casinos and the scratchers, but in this case, death by gambling is the worst. The characters in “The Lottery” are addicted to gambling every summer to kill a person for a bountiful harvest. Gambling is a horrible addiction that most people who have it, don’t realize they do.

“The Lottery” takes place on a fine summer morning in a village in New England are setting up for its annual Lottery. The lottery chooses one person to be stoned to death and in doing so it will produce a bountiful harvest for the village. The lottery takes place and the “winner” is Terrie Hutchison and in the tradition of the lottery, her family was the first ones to throw stones, and then the rest of the village. The village basically sacrifices one of its members every year in the summer.

Traditions are a major part of the village, in “The Lottery” their tradition is to gamble with one of the lives of the village once a year in the summer. The tradition of the lottery is to stone the “winner” to death. There are good traditions and bad traditions. The lottery in the short story “The Lottery” is a gamble with someone’s life, so in the case of the story, the gamble is a bad tradition. Some good traditions are how to spend the holidays every December, and how some spend their summer holidays.

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Gambling is a horrible addiction that ruins the village, in New England with the lottery which takes the life of Terrie Hutchison. In the case of Terrie Hutchison, gambling affects her family as well. The gamble is drawing names and then stones the “winner” to death. Her family is the first to throw stones. Gambling addiction is the worst because it can lead to death in many ways. There are the loan sharks who if you don’t keep paying them it could land you in a grave.

When you have a person with a gambling addiction, they will often lead to a loan shark, because they used all their money and now must go to a loan shark. A loan shark is, “A person who lends money in exchange for its repayment at an interest rate that exceeds the percentage approved by law and who uses intimidating methods or threats of force in order to obtain repayment” (Gale). If I was ever to gamble with my life by dealing with a loan shark, it would be the end of me, because I suck at paying people back, when they loan me money. Gambling addiction is something that needs to be paid attention too.

Gambling is highly addictive if you are not careful and must be paid attention to closely. The gambling industries such as casinos realize what is going on but do nothing to help. “Casinos have acknowledged that problem with gambling, and it is a by-product of gambling expansion and has begun promoting 'responsible gaming'” (Pavalko). The way people act when the gamble compulsively is very different for someone who just gambles occasionally. The person who gambles for fun knows when to quit and the compulsive gambler doesn’t know when to quit and just keeps gambling.

Gambling is a hidden addiction and that basically means it affects millions of Americans daily. The people who suffer from this are the treated the same as alcoholics and drug addicts. They have meetings for them now, but back when this was written the meetings weren’t available yet. “The Lottery” uses a form of a lottery by drawing names, first there were only three-hundred people in the town and their tradition is that they are addicted to the lottery every year on June 27th. The people of this village don’t even object to the lottery, they just do the same stuff every year. If I was to live in this town, I would have tried to leave every chance I had.

The towns people of the village weren’t just addicted to gambling, they were also addicted to what the lottery of name drawing lead to, death by stoning. Stoning dates to early Christianity, because in The Bible stoning was a big punishment. Stoning is a method of capital punishment whereby a group throws stones at a person until the subject dies. No individual among the group can be identified as the one who kills the subject. This contrasts with the case of a judicial executioner. Just this alone would turn me away from this village.

In the short story the head of the household which was the men, once they were marked as there, they had to stand in the center around the black box and pick a name they pick a piece of paper with a name on it, but once they pick the paper, they can’t look at it. Back then it was a custom for men to be the head of the household. Today the head of the household could be men or woman. Men are the ones who were bring home the bacon and nowadays women can work and can have a house and be the woman of the house.

The next part of the gambling is the use of certain objects, in “The Lottery” they use a black box to choose the “winner” of the name drawing. The little black box has all three-hundred names of the whole population of the village and the black box is old and chipped. In today’s world the instruments used for gambling are slot machines, poker tables, bingo cards and etc. Today there are more instruments for people with gambling addiction to get addicted to, and most of their family members don’t really know what is going on.

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