The Importance Of Traditions In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" she argues that traditions lead to the destruction of society through desensitizing people to the gratuitous infliction of pain to their fellow villagers. For example, the traditions the villagers continue to follow cause them to turn against each other despite having lived with each other for nearly their entire life, “Mrs. Graves said,' All of us took the same chance.' 'There is Don and Eva,' Mrs. Hutchinson yelled. 'Make them take their chance!'" Since the lottery takes place in a small-town village, the villagers must have lived with each other for nearly their entire lives, however, their responses do not support Tessie Hutchinson during a time of crisis in her life, implying that during the tradition
Despite pleading to the villagers to stop, they disregarded Tessie's opinion and they commit a grave act, showing they do not even care for the people they have been living with for so many years and would commit heinous acts, inflicting pain upon their own family. Furthermore, the villagers simply follow what they recall from the past about traditions," Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones." The villagers do not fully grasp the ideologies present behind the traditions, implying that rather than contemplating on the purpose of the ritual, they form arbitrary memories of what the traditions in the past allegedly look like. The formation of these bizarre rituals has no reasoning presented behind them, therefore the villagers cause pain upon themselves through the mindless actions of the rituals that they create in an attempt to follow old traditions. The bizarre traditions the villagers follow leads to the infliction of pain towards the others by blindly following old traditions rather than contemplating upon