Grand Prize: Death

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson

In "The Lottery", Shirley Jackson disguises a barbaric ritualistic practice as a modern game of chance.   Each year on June 27th, Mr. Summers conducts a lottery drawing of the villagers from an old, decrepit black box.  Normally, as a lottery usually implies the possibility to earn great wealth and luxury, the villagers should be excited. However, displaying situational irony, the villagers show apprehension, anxiety, and fear at the possibility of winning the lottery.  Furthermore, Old Man Warner reveals the lottery to be a traditional harvest ritual when he recalls the maxim, "Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon," (Jackson 268).  Seeing as, historically, harvest rituals have been associated with sacrifice, the villagers' anxiety becomes understandable.  The winner of the lottery will likely be killed.   Mrs. Hutchinson's stoning at the end of the story validates this inference.  In portraying such a primitive act under the pretense of a modern lottery, Jackson elucidates an unfortunate aspect of human nature.  Humanity shrouds its barbarism with notions of  civility, society, order, and tradition.  According to Middle Eastern tradition, husbands may beat their wives for any number of disciplinary reasons.  This tradition protects the physcial abuse of women as justified and necessary.  Likewise, the villagers, having lost all knowledge of the original reasons for the lottery, justify it as a part of harvest tradition that must continue.