Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" concerns itself with concepts of magic and superstition and their place in society. This is evident, really, from the entirety of the text itself. Here we have a small, rural village. A traditional patriarchy (well, traditional by Western Puritan standards) that is not technologically developed and seems to rely on a yearly ritual sacrifice to ensure the continuation of the village (as evidenced by the line, "Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon").
Ritual sacrifice is not something that is common in our society, and certainly not on a formal basis.The closest approximation to the idea that I can make is the ritual-esque system we have whereby we all sacrifice a great deal of our time accomplishing tasks for society in exchange for the ability to live within that society. In other words, having a job, paying taxes, and living in a heated box called a "house" is not a strict requirement for life, but it certainly makes things a lot easier than hunting out on the plains for your own survival. So, I would say that there is some form of parallel between our day-to-day lives and what is represented in the story. It's a very loose connection, and I openly admit that I'm stretching here. Still, it's theoretically possible for a character in this short story to go off and live on their own. They would avoid "The Lottery" and thus would never have to suffer the possibility of being offered up as a sacrifice.
It's interesting to note that this isn't just one town doing this. The story makes numerous mentions to towns which are either so large as to require the Lottery to be conducted over a period of several days, or have abandoned the Lottery outright. The villagers are making the mistake of confusing correlation and causation. Corn will grow well in fertile soil with the right amounts of sunlight and water. It has no connection to whether or not somebody has been ritually sacrificed that year. However, the villagers are reluctant to accept this premise because they believe stopping the lottery is heretical and will result in poor crops and the possibility of starvation.
As a final note, this concept of ritual sacrifice as a plot device seems to be common throughout history. A recent example would be the very popular Hunger Games series, which is itself based off of older historical events such as the gladiatorial battles of ancient Rome.
Hunger Games is an apt comparison. Comparison aside, I think you can afford to do some thinking on a smaller scale. It's true that ritual sacrifice is not common in our society, but I definitely see evidence in today's society of people carrying on or outdated traditions just for the sake of tradition. The tradition is no longer useful (and perhaps never was...), yet no one wants to dismantle it. These traditions may not be as harmful as ritual sacrifice, but they exist, nonetheless. Likewise, superstitions exist which still haven't been dismantled.
ReplyDeleteafter reading this the " Lottery" it did remind me of the Hunger Games.
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