Inhumane Ritual In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

The short story by Shirley Jackson “The Lottery” serves as a mirror to see our own society and rituals at an extreme. Throughout the story the author normalizes the characters’ inhumane ritual so the reader would be able to understand the underlining meaning of the story. In our society there are rituals that we do not dare to question because they have been embedded into our lives. The character Old Man Warner justifies such rituals by saying, on page 142, “There’s always been a lottery.” he himself not entirely understanding why it is done. Shirley Jackson wants the reader to understand how oblivious society is to itself, and shows how it would be if it were to be looked upon in an outer perspective. The short story starts off by using positive diction, as shown on page 139,
It is neither of those types of stories because everything the reader had to know to understand the story was given, but the reader was so caught up with other details they did not notice. “The Lottery” is a realization type of story because it allows our society to look into itself with fresh eyes. We are so used to seeing the depravity that we have become blind to it. We are so quick to judge other civilizations that do not follow westernized customs, calling them savages for their instinctual nature but we as a whole refuse to see our imperfections. Some of our actions may not even be seen as rituals, for example gender roles, when someone is having a baby people immediately start color coding everything that applies to the certain gender only buying things that are assigned to that gender, and when the parents decide to go against it they are seen as crazy. This can also be seen in “The Lottery” when Old Man Warner was judging the towns that have given up the lottery calling them “crazy” and foolish young