However, abandoning these tasks and many of the other rules and customs that were initially part of the lottery weakened its meaning to the point where Old Man Warner can only vaguely remember that corn harvesting is the basis for this tradition (Jackson 628). In fact, the only thing consistent about the tradition of the lottery is what happens after the drawing itself. The narrator goes on to explain that "although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones" (Jackson 630). In essence, the rules to the lottery, with the exception of the black box and the stoning, are new. The inability to keep the original rules and paraphernalia for the lottery can be strongly correlated to the abandonment of the meaning of the act itself. This realization by the readers can only bring them to question why the villagers still participate in the lottery without a remembering a reason to do so much like any of the traditions they observe today.
Subsequently, the characters in the story demonstrate how individuals are willing to blindly follow these diluted traditions and rituals. .
The lottery is an event that is even more tenured than oldest man in the village, Old Man Warner, who is seventy-seven years old. The mentality of the older inhabitants of the village is that since it has always been done, therefore it should always be done. When a younger adult within the village mentions to Old Man Warner that a northern village is in talks about giving up the lottery and some villages have already given it up, Warner becomes outraged and states, "there's always a lottery nothing but trouble in that" (Jackson 628). The repercussions of not holding a lottery are never clarified and it is only suggested by Old Man Warner that the village could return to more primitive times if not done. This notion is ironical since the result of the lottery is as savage and barbaric of a ritual as practiced by any primitive being.
