The Lottery

            The story of "The Lottery" is a story that is filled with Shirley Jackson's view of her society. "The Lottery" is a story that takes place in a small foreign town on a warm and sunny day; you will see further down in the paper the significance of the weather. The story was used to express many controversial ideas and conflicts that can make people think about the culture that they are currently living in. Freidman notes that one of the most interesting points of this story is that the village is a typical society that any modern person could live in, "Jackson's story portrays an "average" New England village with "average" citizens." This points out that there could be things like this going on around us with out people even thinking that there is something wrong with it. It also brings us to realize that there are still many cultures around us that are barbaric and use outdated traditions. The theme of "The Lottery" is focused around the traditions that all people have and re-examining where those traditions come from. In this story there are three main focuses that Jackson has, they are ignorance, symbolism, and irony.
             One of the largest tools that Jackson uses in this story is ignorance; it is based around a very ignorant and outdated tradition. In one of Raglands critiques she states, "The Lottery is a story of mediaeval customs and how misplaced they are with in modern society." One of the most rediculous points in the story is when you realize that they are stoning a human for a sacrifice. The most ignorant thing in the story of "The Lottery" is the fact that everyone in the town wants to stop the stoning, but nobody will do it because it is a tradition. In some cases, especially like this one, tradition is not important enough to sacrifice a human life. "The underlying current of evil would have to be the actual barbarism inherent of the lottery itself," Ragland states.