"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson

“School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands.”
“Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes. They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed.” (562)

Although Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” is about a barbaric ritual, it also portrays other rituals that the villagers have acquired over time. The two quotes above show how closely related were the behaviors of the young boys and the older men, (the boys’ fathers). Growing up in such a small town which only housed about three hundred people, made them keep up with certain mental characteristics and actions after becoming older and having a family. The young boys gather together and talk about things that matter to them. Same goes for the fathers. They discuss “planting and rain, tractors and taxes.” None of them gossip. They are very concerned with their topics of interests, unlike the women who gossiped and the young girls who talked amongst themselves and looked over their shoulders at the boys.
These rituals are all a part of their accustomed and self accepting destruction. The ritual called the “lottery” was very barbaric in nature, yet no one questioned it and all the villagers joined in on the act. Even the immediate family of the victim, as I will call her, bonds to carry out this ritual. Although these actions are cruel, brutal, and graphic, I believe that the author wanted to make her readers understand the pointless violence and general inhumanity they may have experienced in their own lives. Going back to the above quotes, both are pointless in nature. Do we really need to know what the boys and fathers were like that morning? Their description is the total opposite of what their ritual made them out to be. The above two quotes create a feeling of a nice town with children running around, getting along and attending school together; their parents also getting along and conversating amongst each other that morning. Brainwashing was not a necessary act for the persuasion of these children. It was instilled in them to do as they are told and what they see due to the village customs and rituals. This explains why over time the children and parents acted so much a like. Their perceptions were affected by the set rules of a little village.
Right from the beginning, there is a feeling of customs and ways of life that get passed onto the offspring. The same way the parents were, the children were as well in this story. Since a young age, their actions were strongly similar and foreshadowed the children’s steps of following in their fathers’ footsteps. Tessie Hutchinson was killed by her community members and family. But the biggest twist comes when it is said that she “wins” the lottery. She “wins” to be stoned to death. The only thing she won was an escape out of that inhuman and brutal mindset of a village.