The Lottery essay

Humanity is now at very high point of development, we have so far progressed in science and technology, we have discovered so many secrets of nature and now live in the information era, but still we show so much prejudice in social relationships. Shirley Jackson is one of the writers who managed to concentrate readers’ attention at our hidden nature. In her short story, “The Lottery”, she tells about a small village of about three hundred people where there is a tradition of annual lottery. The sense of lottery is to choose a victim to be sacrificed for good harvest. All the families of the village gather in the square, boys collect a pile of stones in one of the corners, and one respected man leads the ceremony. Some sober-minded members of the community try to speak against this old tradition of lottery, but the oldest members call them fools and persist on it. First all the heads of families pull pieces of paper, and one of them gets a paper with black spot. Then all the members of his family, including small boy and girls take out slips one more time, and the man’s wife Tessy Hutchinson gets one with the black spot. Then everyone takes stones and hits the woman to death. It’s all the same done with Jesus Christ, when the crowd chose inveterate stealer and thief to be forgiven, but not their Savior. In the Middle Ages women being accused of witchcraft were burnt on fire alive, and some researchers consider it not only had religious nature, but was a way to repress female activity and save male domination. Moreover, at that time culture of common people was denied by cultural elite, and therefore they tried to restrict knowledge going from pagan “anticulture”.
This “witch-hunt” was not over. In the 20th century in the USA there was its modification known as McCarthyism, when thousand of people were accused of disloyalty and subversion; in the USSR there was a fight against cosmopolitans and intelligence on the whole.
Helen E. Nebeker finds deep implications in major names of the heroes, for instance “Martin” has its roots in a Middle English “ape”, telling that there is “the Hairy Ape within us all” (Nebeker 101). Fritz Oehlshlaeger discovers a parallel with Anne Hutchinson who was unfairly executed for rebel in the 17th century. In the film “Dogville” by Lars von Trier the residents of small village turn to oppress severely the woman who searched for refuge in their place while running away from the gangsters. People, so nice at first, turn out to show their true face in everyday actions, to show mistreat, jealousy, lust, flabbiness and cruelty. And what is the most frightening thing, the protagonist in the end finds it fair and highly moral to annihilate the whole village. The idea that people with the highest morals are the cruelest beings is also reflected in Jackson’s short story where respectable woman takes one of the biggest stones to throw. And really, we still have death penalty, and people gather to watch it, we condemn abortion, but don’t accept children left by mother and at the same time we condemn women who bring up their children without husbands, we still have prejudice to people of other race and women still have restricted access to CEO positions. Herd instinct is very strong even in the most intelligent representatives of mankind who sag under the burden of social rules and laws which teach us to be all identical, and each time you try to be different, you are severely persecuted by others. We must think more about it and remember we are Homo Sapiens, and we always have choice what to do and not what to do.

References
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Eds. John Schib and John Clifford. 4th ed. New York: Bedford/ St. Martins, 2008, 836.
Nebeker, Helen E. “‘The Lottery’: Symbolic Tour de Force.” American Literature 46.1: (1974): 100-07.