The Ability to Abandon Reason To Preserve Tradition And The Fear of Standing Out

Category: Culture, Ethics, The Lottery
Last Updated: 16 Feb 2023
Pages: 4 Views: 77

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson demonstrates mob mentality, the ability to abandon reason to upkeep tradition, and the fear of standing out. The Lottery, at its most basic form, is fair to all concerned, as the family who chooses the black dot is random. Extenuating circumstances, however, make the ritual less fair, for example, if someone has a family member who is not there, someone else in the family is required to draw for them too. To treat citizens justly means to not punish them when they’ve done no wrong, nor is it to upkeep tradition when it clearly harms the townspeople. Throughout the story, the Author Jackson emphasizes the townspeople’s blind acceptance of the ritual and its performance of it without any questions or hesitations.

They discuss how the ritual is no longer being performed in other communities but fail to ask why their community would continue on. The author demonstrates the townspeople’s feelings of powerlessness to change, or even attempt to change the circumstances, even though there is no one forcing them to keep things the same. If the villagers stopped to question the lottery, they’d be confronted by the question as to why they so willingly commit murder as a part of their daily lives. They fail to question the tradition because it has always been a part of their lives. The author expects the reader to understand the concept that in a society, it’s incredibly difficult to see the traditions that are kept that hurt them nonetheless. One of the characters, Old Man Warner, who is conservative about the preservation of this tradition holds the ritual to a high standard, despite the fact that he’s seen years of murders of townspeople.

He expressed disappointment in the official of the ritual Mr. Summers for “joking with everybody”, and rather than blaming the tradition of murder in their town for causing this turmoil and tension, passed the blame to the “pack of young fools” and declared they would next be asking the community to return to caveman ways. He neglects to realize that maintaining this ritual is worse than removing it, as it’s something that’s part of his yearly life. It’s clear that the townspeople exhibit hesitation before the ritual, but the fear of standing out to oppose the town's history overweighs their fear of the ritual. For example, Mrs. Dunbar, when she is required by the business of the official of the lottery to draw for her husband, as her son isn’t even 16 years old as of yet, “regretfully” fills in for her husband.

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Mrs. Dunbar is extremely hesitant as she’s aware this puts her at a greater risk, but rather than standing out and questioning these rules, she blindly accepts them. The anonymity of the selection process leads to a sense of the universality of the people, as they can remain under the idea that they are not choosing the person to be stoned, rather it’s a random chance, therefore its fair and equal to all. Each year, someone new is chosen at random to be killed, and no family is safe, even that of the man conducting the ceremony. Although Tessie broke no law, and did nothing wrong, by choosing the marked paper, from the logic of the ritual she must be killed. Tessie was not against the ritual nor one to speak against it before she was selected, but when the reality hit that it was her body that would be stoned, she realized how barbaric and unnecessary the ritual truly is.

This reading, although I must say I don’t believe it’s unusual, provides a great example of townspeople blindly following tradition, even when others surrounding them have removed the ritual. As you think more in-depth, as a reader we inevitably start to question what systems and laws are in place that we blindly accept as they’ve never directly impacted us. To question history and tradition is absolutely difficult, but that is crucial to making just and lasting change. There’re landslides of news articles today of young black men being sentenced to prison for crimes they didn’t commit, or punished rougher than their white counterparts, and this is because of this general fear of black men. Parents repeat to their children the ideas of fear and crime, without realizing they’re labeling an entire community unfairly.

Jackson demonstrates the reality of the town and the citizens by the assignment of normal routine to their characters. As the men gather, she narrates their entrance, and describes their conversations as about “planting and rain, tractors and taxes” and as the women enter the town center, “they greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip”. While the action of random stoning certainly isn’t in modern society today, there are absolutely other rituals in which we partake in without question. Tradition is a large part of small towns today, as the idea to continue on with the ideals and morals held by relatives is given more importance that the possibility for concrete change. White supremacists constantly argue for their right to wave the confederate flag, as they believe since their grandfathers fought to maintain the institution of slavery, they can honor them with that flag. They neglect the constant oppression that the flag highlights and ignores the history and negative connotations.

It would be simple to honor the soldiers in other ways, with photographs or with their possessions, and yet white men have decided to choose the flag that supported the oppression of so many others. All prejudices, based of sex, race, religion, economic class, sexual orientation and others, are essentially random. They don’t exist because of the actions of one individual, but rather an ideal that the group has somehow wronged society and therefore deserve bad treatment. Those who are persecuted in the story are because of a trait, for example, the drawing of the slip of paper, that is out of their control. The idea of a scapegoat, that stoning someone to death yearly purges the town of bad and allows for good, happens all the time with organized crime. For example, drug rings, when persecuted by the law, only aim to imprison the higher up individuals, rather than genuinely look at all those involved.

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The Ability to Abandon Reason To Preserve Tradition And The Fear of Standing Out. (2023, Feb 16). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/the-ability-to-abandon-reason-to-preserve-tradition-and-the-fear-of-standing-out/

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