The Non-Stop Lottery

The Non-Stop Lottery

  • Submitted By: flashyo
  • Date Submitted: 03/31/2009 10:24 PM
  • Category: Book Reports
  • Words: 913
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The Non-Stop Lottery

The winner of a lottery usually is money, but the winner from “The Lottery” gets an unbelievable prize that might be eerie. Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” takes place in a small town of three hundred comes together once a year to participate in a town lottery. The lottery has been an ongoing tradition that has completely lost its original meaning. The townspeople show that it has become an annual ritual that must be performed with the saying “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon”. Since the villagers believe the chosen one will bring a corn harvest and only care about the corn, it would be very risky for the villagers to experiment with not holding a lottery for one year.
It has been a ritual for generations hold a lottery every year in June. The paraphernalia, a black box, is part of the ritual to the lottery because the “lucky” chosen one will draw from the black box. The black box has grown shabbier each year after the lottery, and the black box is no longer completely black with stained and faded, so Mr. Summers persuades frequently to the villagers about making a new box; however, no one likes the idea because they don’t want to upset the tradition. When the lottery begins, the man of each family comes forth and takes a slip of paper. The “lucky” one is chosen by getting a black dot on the paper, and the family that is chosen is the Hutchinson’s and right away Tessie Hutchinson protests about how the process is not fair and the ritual isn’t right. She tries to avoid being chosen so she tries to make her married daughters do the lottery over. The entire town does not empathize with Tessie, and they continue with the ritual and begin to choose who the “lucky” one will be. Tessie is chosen, and the entire town begins the process of collecting stones. In order to complete the lottery ritual the chosen one must be stoned to death, so the villagers will get the corn harvest. It is impossible to stop the lottery for one...

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