The Lottery Compare And Contrast

Can our relationships with others define who we are? I conclude that our relationships with others can mold and portray who we are as individual beings. In this essay, I will use my personal experiences to explain the effects that words, actions and perceptions in our relationships with others shape who we are, while comparing and contrasting my life with the following stories. One of these stories is called “The Lottery” which is about a village where they perform extremely outdated and unethical traditions where whoever wins ‘the lottery’ will be stoned to death. Everybody has to participate and it is such an old tradition that bystanders have accepted the culture so deeply into their lives that they will not object or act against ‘the lottery’.
In this story there is a small town where people gather around annually to play the lottery. The children play in the beginning of the story around rocks which we later learn they will use to stone people to death. All awhile the men hang out and the women catch up on gossip. It is mentioned that the lottery has been a tradition for a very long time. For example, the box that is used for the slips of paper is described as battered and old from being used for such a long time. Eventually all of the people gather around with their families and started performing the lottery. They play by having the head of every family, usually the man of the house pull a slip of paper from a box and if you get a slip with a black dot on it your family is chosen. Next, every member of the family has to get a slip of paper from the box and which ever one person gets the marked paper is chosen as “the winner of the lottery’. If you are the winner then that means you are doomed to being stoned to death by everyone else. In part of the story two characters talk about how other towns have gotten rid of the lottery, one character gets very angered by this and starts talking about how you shouldn’t mess with tradition. I found it odd when in this story the mother of a family “Tessie” was the winner but her family didn’t seem to be negatively affected. As for everyone else in the village, they did not show any emotion of compassion or sympathy for her. It was as if everyone had already taken the mindset that it was better her than them and that the lottery wasn’t anything wrong because it has been around for such a long time that it has become the norm. I can relate with this story partially because my parents have followed old traditions from Mexico where a man’s role is to work and a woman’s role is to cook, clean and manage the household. For a majority of my life, my parents have raised my siblings and I with this mindset in place. I