Lottery tickets, jackpots and millions of dollars are everyone’s dream. Receiving a huge sum of money for free could change anyone’s life. The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson tackles this idea in a different way. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a story that keeps you on the edge of your seat by creating a tense mood without directly saying anything of killing or death. It is only revealed in the end that the ‘winner’ of the lottery is killed by their peers. We meet multiple characters throughout the story as well as learn about many changes that have happened to the lottery. Jackson’s work does a great job reflecting society and showing how separated we can be in terms of tradition, morals and what we value. Reading the story helps develop ideas of poor morals in society and brings light to the idea that killing is rooted inside of people and not caused by sporadic action.

The characters we are introduced to in “The Lottery” all represent different aspects of society. From good to bad we can see different morals through all these different people. The first characters we are introduced to are the children of the town. They were running around playing and gathering stones which were later used for the stoning of the lottery winner. During the first read of the text this scene seemed very innocent and lighthearted. Young boys playing during vacation from school with no worries in the world. But when we find out that they were preparing to kill a fellow member in there society we see how killing is seen as normal or even fun in this society. Children are used to it and gather materials for it together. This can easily be seen as a depiction of how children can pick up actions of there elders and view them as normal or even as enjoyable. Children are most influenced by there parents and people they look up to. This could be a simple reason why traditions or practices such as “the lottery” continue for so long. Some people argue that past generations are the reason why hateful things such as racism and homophobia continue. I can see this view point and Shirley Jackson shows a great example of this. If a child learns everything from a higher figure and practices it for there whole life it is going to continue. Not only that it will be passed on to there children. No matter how many changes are made, the original practices will always take place. This is also shown in the text because many changes have happened to “the lottery” but the end product still happens every year and it will continue to happen because it is rooted inside the mind of children who grow to become adults that promote these activities.

The next character we meet is Mr Summers. He hosts the lottery. We learn that the lottery is so old a lot of old traditions had been lost and Mr Summers even makes suggestions to change the box they use. His suggestions were met by no changes but he continued to make the same suggestion every year. Other old traditions that were lost over the years were a recital or a chant preformed by the host. Also a salute but those things seemed to become less important as the lottery is done quickly. Mr Summers can be seen in this story as the authority figure even though

he still is just another member of society who has to participate in the lottery as well. Mr summers can represent how accepting our society is today. No matter how many suggestions he makes nothing really changes besides old rituals that have become unimportant. The big deal, which is the lottery, remains the same so that is all that seems to matter. We can also see Mr Summers has a very nonchalant attitude to him throughout the entire lottery process. When he first arrives he walks up and all he says is “little late today folks.” This makes it seem like this is just a normal thing to not only Summers but the rest of the village since he doesn’t make it sound so severe that he is late. He also says “guess we better get started, get this over with, so’s we can go back to work” This makes it seem like the lottery is just a part of there day or even as important as a chore. The people in the village just accept it also.

Another person we meet is Old Man Warner. He is the oldest person in the village and has participated in 77 lotteries. Old Man Warner is a very old school, hard headed character who complains about the current day people. In the story we find out that this village is one of the last that practices the lottery while a few have already stopped doing it. We can see Warners attitude almost right away as he says “Listening to young folks, nothings good enough for them”. “Pack of young fools” We see how he feels about the current generation and feels like all they do is complain which is ironic since he is complaining about them. He is complaining about how other towns have stopped the lottery and he also complains how Summers interacts with others. He continues to go on and say “it is not how it used to be”. Old Man Warner can be seen as a representation of older people in today’s society. We often hear the same complaints from older people saying that times have changed too much as well as saying things aren’t the same.

In the end “the lottery” by Shirley Jackson can represent modern day society through characters, morals and traditions. We can see clear connections throughout the text once you read deeply.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.