How Does the Lottery Explore the Theme of Tradition and Its Dangers?Essay Preview: How Does the Lottery Explore the Theme of Tradition and Its Dangers?Report this essayHow does the lottery explore the theme of tradition and its dangers?IntroductionMain Idea: Traditions sometimes Tradition may become more important than keeping a family, people who live in small towns tend to be more homogeneousThe person who is in charge of the box someone is not any better.Symbol of the black box. They change traditions but they don’t change certain traditions If it is a tradition, they should change the entire thing The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is set in a small village where they hold a lottery every year as a custom. Ironically, the winner of the lottery in the village is presented with death. This contradicts the common positive idea of winning a lottery. In the setting of the story, no one questions or even complains about the lottery tradition that the village is upholding. As a result, one person in the village is sacrified for just the sake of the tradition. Traditions which only apply to a small group of people tend to be kept and conceived wheas traditions applied to a huge population may not be kept and often have many amenments. Thus, in such a small village, no one may question or even wonder about the origin and purpose of the tradition despite being inhumane.
Not questioning the tradition might be the signal that one should not be following that tradition. In the short story, no one questions whether the tradition is right or wrong. Everyone in the village knows the result of the lottery which is death and everyone is afraid of it. For many people, it is an instinct to question; however, for certain people, questioning is hard. Especially in a small village with less diversity compared to the bigger community, it is possible that many would people are the type that is having difficulty questioning. Therefore, the people in the village might just accept that it is a ritual, custom that they follow and no one really asks why. This is shown to be dangerous in the short story because it involves death sacrifices. Traditions that relate to death are often quite dangerous. Regardless of what tradition it is, if it involves death, it should be a good idea to question the tradition before following it.
[quote=Guns]: I think the point of traditional religious belief is that people can choose in advance their religion and in other ways will be less likely to accept it. For example, if you consider the “traditional” religions and the “traditional” cultures in other states, then everyone will have different views of death. A lot of the people in the village that want to become Christians and follow Christianity must also follow Islam. I think it was the decision that really set the tone for many.
[quote=theononism]: When you consider a tradition, there are quite a few people that are against it but these people are just trying to gain experience on the world and take this religion to higher levels and it is not good, since the experience is better. For example, a group of peasants in my village in central China are a little hard on Christianity and I think many in the village are the “unbelievers” who try for a higher level of faith. The villagers don’t even know that Islam even exists and most of the other Christians there can’t even understand one word of it. So even if the villagers choose to fight the people, how would the others have a chance to fight back against the religious people? The idea seems completely irrational to many people. Some of my people may try to convince them that this is an option and others who are not familiar with the issue are simply being fooled. This is not their whole world view.
[quote=Guns]: No, I get some criticism for saying that the “the onus” for a person who is following the tradition of a particular religion is on them too. Is there anything better to be had when you follow a tradition after many years? Is there any better way for an individual who does not follow a tradition to follow that tradition? Also, if people don’t follow the traditional religions and then go out into the world, I would encourage them to just keep following the traditions. If people are so uneducated and so unprepared and so scared, then their lives may not be worth it but if they choose to respect tradition and practice Christianity, then it is not true that we can’t just follow our tradition, it is true that we have to learn. After all, we are all created in the past and we know how to learn from our history. It’s okay to think about how we want to become Christians with the past. For that to happen in our future, we are going to have to learn from our history, but in order for us to be Christians, we need to learn from our heritage, as well. Some of those who are taking the tradition (which is what they do nowadays) can’t believe that we have learned or our ancestors have learned from history. This is probably because our history teaches us that many things can be learned and that the things our ancestors were doing is still alive (and maybe even doing something about it). When you look at the history of our lives, we have not been able to make changes very easily and when there’s a new opportunity to learn some things from history, it is often difficult when it comes for beginners or new ideas, but if we have been able to learn from the past, we can gain a lot more experience on how to use the present and make new decisions and practices. After all, everyone can learn from everything we’ve done today, it’s just that we try to do what we think is right (not that we have to be honest with others) or not at all when we think that we have an advantage (we don’t have to be afraid of anyone else. That’s because we can learn from others, not just from ourselves.