“The Lottery” Modern Day Examples: Works By Shirley Jackson
This story is still relevant today, 70 years later, due to the current political climate and republican platform. In The Lottery, an old man who has won many lotteries rejects any reforms and says that people are not as they used to. This is a common complaint from Republicans and social conservatives. The slogan used by our president today, “Make America Wonderful Again”, is an example of how it has been portrayed. The Lottery is another example where the villagers, without asking any questions, blindly follow Summers in his lottery tradition.
The Lottery reminded me a lot of Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” as both stories are set in a dystopian world where the people are controlled/managed by an authority figure. The stories of “The Lottery”, “Fahrenheit 451”, and both are based on the idea that people can be trapped by tradition. The characters in Fahrenheit 451 are stuck with the custom of burning books, and they can’t read them. This is especially true for the firemen like Guy Montag. In “The Lottery,” every character is trapped by the tradition that the lottery results in a death each year. Both stories have characters who believe the tradition has been followed for centuries and must be maintained. The people do not bother to question the cruelty of the custom or to speak out against it. They blindly follow it.
Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible”, which both plays focus on the importance of the individual or the community, is a play that I found “The Lottery”, similar. Bill Hutchinson’s drawing of a black-marked paper was the focus of “The Lottery”. Tituba, in “The Crucible”, is singled and accused of having an affair with the Devil. In both cases, conflicts started when a community member was betrayed and singled out. People do not defend the scapegoats because they think the community comes first. Both stories end with the death of an innocent victim. In the lottery Tessie gets stoned by the harvest. John the innocent also dies from hanging in The Crucible for refusing confess to witchcraft. Both deaths, while tragic, were unjust. The themes of hypocrisy are also present in “The Lottery”, as well as “The Crucible”, throughout both the story and the text.
