The Lottery

This prose centers on the traditional habits in a village that loves to play a lottery at the summer. It began with the description of the summer day when people generally take a long vacation during summer, in the contrary the people in this village had to do an unusual custom that was hitting somebody by stones until he or she died. It was a contradiction between the setting and the story because it described the not-liberty feeling of the villagers by the sunny day which has a lot of happiness sense.


From the time setting description, this story began in the morning when the people took the lottery until it left by nothing in 2 (two) hours. Then the story continued until the noon dinner finished because Mr. Hutchinson came late to the lottery and said that she had left her dishes in the sink.
It can be found a character named Mr. Summer. Hearing his name, it had a good sense. Nevertheless, his life was quite uneasy. Living with no children and together with his scold wife might cause him to be a not good character in the story. Moreover, he was the person who created the custom and he also an only man who still had a desire to keep this custom even the other people did not want to perpetuate it.
The situation of the event was identical to the characteristic of villages, since the villagers only follow the official lottery conducted by Mr. Summer though they actually did not want to keep that anymore. It was stated by the people act not to pay attention to the lost of the original black box. Then they did not aware to the box which had been used for the lottery was starting to be brittle. They still did the custom because they did not have enough bravery to voice their want, to against the unfair play. Also the people’s feelings were described explicitly in the story that they wanted a change, a more modern system in their village, no playing the old lottery that sacrifice somebody they love very much.
But, the other villagers that still want to do this were the children. Generally, the characteristics of children in fact are identical to the characters of children that were described in this story. They took many stones to hit somebody in the lottery, while the adult (Mrs. Dunbar) only brought the small stones. The situation in the rest story, when people had found somebody who will be hit by many stones until die, was drawn ironically. There was not anyone who was brave to provide Mrs. Hutchinson; they all hit her by the stones, even her own family joined with the people whereas she provided her husband from the punishment before.
The other ironic situation was explained also in the rest story when the several characters, such as Old Man Warner, Steve Adam, Mrs. Graves, and Mr. Dunbar who said critically about the lottery in the middle event, then they were in the front position to hit Mr. Hutchinson and even asked everyone in that event to follow them to hit her.

The writter of the short story is Shirley Jackson