The Never Changing Heritage
Society is always changing due to time. Although in some peculiar circumstances, there are towns between towns that collate themselves in heritage. Themes of cities are even based upon history which correlates back to the start of civilization today. For example, Tyler Texas’s theme is the rose city; it traces back in history and it shows today. In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, there are many themes such as death, inequality, and blindly following tradition.
Death, in many cultures, is widely accepted as a spiritual journey to the afterlife. In Ancient Egyptian’s methodology, they strongly believe that one’s possessions would be taken to the afterlife with them; so, they burry the corpse with its possession. ('Ancient Egyptian Culture') The Lottery shows that death is accepted because that is what they the town believes is right. The stones are a symbol of death (or the reaper) because the kids collect them for the brutal murder in the town square. They are then used to kill the person that is selected in the lottery. The reason death is such a huge part of the story is that it is the main antagonizing problem. People blindly follow a historical tradition to kill someone.
Inequality is another theme throughout the story mostly inequality is shown between male and female counterparts in the story, especially during the drawing of names. “Dunbar, Dunbar. That’s right. He’s broken his leg, hasn’t he? Who’s Drawing for him?” it continues with a woman saying me which ends up being his wife, and another person saying “Don’t you have a grown boy to do it for you Janey”. In this example, you can see that in their town they believe in man ruling the house and the mother being basically the housemaid. Today we don’t really use this old method as much, we believe that each person has their own rights and should all be treated the same.
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Blind Tradition, the theme is the biggest one of all in the town. This ritual helps the harvest grow better and has been in the town’s heritage. Many things symbolize this theme such as the black box used every year. People don’t question why they are killing an innocent person because it is tradition. These citizens are blindly following what they think is right because it has been done for so long and not one person stops to actually think why they are doing it. In a way it is similar to the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel in the way people follow someone or tradition in this case to have a reason to kill another.
Today, society has changed due to time, people are more aware of their personal beliefs and are encouraged to think more critically, creatively, emotionally, and collaboratively. We learn from each other, history, and even moral stories such as The Lottery, Night, Harry Potter, and tons more from creative people. And today we can analyze the differences in society from the past to the present. In “The Lottery” we discovered the contributing things in society including death, inequality, and blindly following traditions.
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The Never Changing Heritage. (2023, Feb 16). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/the-never-changing-heritage/
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