A death tradition

In Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery,” a tradition takes place once a year in a small village. All the villagers must play a lottery, on which one member of each family must take a ticket from a box. This year, Mr. Hutchinson had won, however he didnt seemed happy. After he took out the ticket, each member of the family needed to take out the tickets again. When Mrs Hutchinson (Tessie) got the winning ticket, she didnt even seemed exited, she even was worried and altered. Then, Mr Summers (the one who organized the lottery) and the rest if the village begin throwing rocks at her, while Tessie screams "Its not fair!"


I think that the use of Imagery on this story is very strong because it doesnt only appeals to our sight, but also to our other senses, which most short stories arent capable of doing. A clear example is:

"The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green."

Here the author makes us feel as if we were inside the story, feeling the warm and sunny weather of that day on summer. It gives us a description of everything on this scene, like the fllowers and the grass.

"The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box."

The author shows us in this part of the book that people just do the lottery because is is a long time tradition. She isnt just telling us that the black box is old, implicitly she is telling us that the tradition has been going on for years, before the oldest man in town was born. She is letting us know that the people in the village just follow the tradition.

I really enjoyed this short story. Even though the story wasnt easy to read and I got confused at first, it had a really strong message and it got really interesting near the end. The message was that tradition makes us do not reasonable and not logic  things. I really liked how the author didnt gave the reader all the information but instead she made the reader really think throughout the story. In my opinion, this was a great short story.