Final Project Introduction to Prose

Analyzing Tradition of “The Lottery”

The Lottery, one of the Shirley Jackson’s works, was first published in June 26th, 1948. The story is concerned with the tradition which can’t be separated from human’s life that human keep information not only from spoken but also written. In The Lottery, Shirley Jackson explained about the connection between tradition and daily life which sometimes doesn’t make sense and forces humans to do it without any logic reason, but these exactly made it unique. On the other hand, the tradition can be alive because of many reasons and things that support it. In my opinion, the existence of a tradition can be caused by fear and support from other people.

I am quite interested in the unique of the tradition of “The Lottery”.  It can be seen from the climax of the story which showed some differences of first opinion about “The Lottery.” In the present, the one who wins the lottery will get the prize, but here in the last part of the story showed the strange ritual, instead of winning the prize, the one who won that lottery would be thrown by stones by the villagers.

Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stone. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box. (Jackson, 1966: 564)

The words ‘they still remembered to use stone’ above means they were used to use stones for throwing the winner of the lottery. The ritual of this tradition, which was kept by the villagers of “The Lottery,” may appear as the real harshness. But, contradictive with my opinion, I think that ritual which they say harsh, is actually the unique of the tradition because it is different from human habitual action and the other traditions.

            The tradition of “The Lottery” which I have read was the annual tradition for harvest. It was used to be ended by throwing stones to the winner of lottery, which appears harsh, every June 27^th. This was written in the first paragraph of the story “The Lottery,”

[t]he morning of June 27^th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of full summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26^th, but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner. (Jackson, 1966: 556)

The excerpt describes the setting of time and place. The description of place describes that the village is a small village, which consisted of about three hundreds people only. The description of the time setting shows us the date of 27^th June which was the day of the annual tradition.

 “The Lottery” existed because of the information which kept being preserved from generation to generation by the people of “The Lottery” itself. In my opinion, there are two reasons of them kept doing the harsh ritual. They may come from the external ad the internal factors, which are fear and support from the other people.

In my opinion, the first reason of people kept preserving “The Lottery” is the internal fear from each single individual. The fear may come from the strong belief of preserving habit. The habit which was constantly done may appear as an obligation, it may even become a need which once the rule breaks, and something unwanted will endanger the society of “The Lottery” itself. The strong belief of the myth causes some fear from the inside.

            In my opinion, the point of the myth of tradition was the crop. If they kept doing the tradition, then their crops, especially the corns, would get heavy soon. This was showed by The Old Man Warner who said that ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’ In my opinion, heavy soon means good crop which is enough to fulfill their needs until the next harvest. On the contrary, if they stopped doing the tradition, the harvest failure would happen, then they would get into devastated hunger and unable to survive. This was showed by the words of The Old Man Warner in the story, ‘First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns.’ From that I can know that the main job of the society was the farmer. The farmers would keep doing the same work from one season to another season. The fear of the myth of the harvest failure made the people kept preserving the tradition.

On the other hand, the ritual used to be done becomes the sacred habit, so were all aspects that support the ritual considered sacred. One day, Mr. Summer would change the black box of The Lottery because he thought it was no not proper anymore, all the people because they thought it had big role in the ritual.

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. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. (Jackson, 1966: 558)

Disagreement or which was more likely fear was showed from the words ‘but no one liked to upset,’ showed how people really afraid of having harvest failure, that’s why they were being so conservative to this tradition. We can see it from the words ‘but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box’ and their reason was ‘[t]here was a story that present box […] when the first people settled down to make a village here[,]’ it means that the black box was around since some years ago and it was used to and would always be used by the society of the story for “The Lottery.” The fear in the society of “The Lottery” has a very big influence to the people kept doing the annual ritual.

            If the fear is the first reason, then the support from the other people is the second reason. Support from other people which came from the external also has big influence on people preserving “The Lottery”. There’s a certain time when people fear is lost, for example there’s a thought of the new generation who doesn’t believe in the tradition anymore and also the influence from the people of other villages who do not believe in the tradition anymore, here the support from the other people to preserve the tradition is strongly needed.

The external support can’t be done by all people, only certain people who were trusted  and  respected by society. This was also said by Shirley Jackson “The Lottery,” in the direct conversation.

“They do say,” Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, “that over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery.”

Old Man Warner snorted. “Pack of crazy fools,” he said. “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them.  Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody works any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’ First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There’s always been a lottery,” he added petulantly. “Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody.”

“Some places have already quit lotteries,” Mrs. Adams said.

“Nothing but trouble in that,’ Old Man Warner said stoutly. “Pack of young fools.” (Jackson, 1966: 561)

From the direct conversation above, I can say that the external supporter in the story is Old Man Warner. This was showed from his words ‘Pack of crazy fools’.  It shows his anger when listened to the news that the other villages had left the sacred tradition. From the excerpt, I can know that one of the reasons of some people left the tradition was the young generation. This is showed from his words, ‘Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. […] Pack of young fools’. Support from Old Man Warner can motivate the villagers of the story to preserve tradition and to stand from the influence from the other people who don’t do the tradition anymore.

            Beside Old Man Warner, the man who supported was Mr. Summers. It is because he had big role to do the tradition. This is showed in the excerpt the story of “The Lottery,”

[t]he lottery was conducted—as were the square dances, the teen age club, the Halloween program—by Mr. Summers, who had time and energy to devote to civic activities. (Jackson, 1966: 557)

From the excerpt, we can know that Mr. Summers was ‘who had time and energy to devote to civic activities’. It means that Mr. Summers is the one who is so loyal and care to the society, that’s why he always prepared for the ritual of tradition “The Lottery.” In the other paragraph said,

[t]he night before the lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of paper and put them in the box, and it was then taken to the safe of Mr. Summers’ coal company and locked up until Mr. Summers was ready to take it to the square next morning. (Jackson, 1966: 558)

The words from the excerpt show how serious Mr. Summers in preparing the ritual tradition. Although there are some traditions which had been left behind.

[t]here had been, also, a ritual salute, […], but this also had changed with time [.] (Jackson, 1966: 559)

The excerpt clearly shows that as the time went by, there were some changes in the tradition. But, Mr. Summers kept preserving “The Lottery” as long as he can.

The supports from the external really influence people to do the tradition. Moreover, it was done by the trusted and respected people. Their spirits kept motivating people to preserve the tradition, so that people feel obligated to keep doing it.

            Long time/several years ago, the tradition had strongly attached in the people life style and it is so hard to be released. They even do that as an obligation. Beside that, people in the old time kept preserving the tradition, because of the fear of the negative effects that would happen once they didn’t do that. As the time goes by, people started to leave the traditions. There’s a thought in the young generation who consider that preserving the tradition is lame. In this case, the support from other people is needed to motivate them preserving their tradition. From the story of “The Lottery”, we can see that both the fear from the internal and the support from the trusted people had big role in preserving the Lottery tradition.

Work Cited

Jackson, S. (1966). The Lottery. In J. Moffett & K. R. McElheny, Points Of View (pp. 556-565). New York: New American Library.