The Lottery Theme Essay
The short story “The Lottery” was very creative and eventful, that by the end of the story leaves you wanting more. Throughout the entire short story, it has a lot of key underlining themes that help the reader understand who they are and what type of society they live in. Some of those major themes in the story consist of the danger of blindly following tradition, the randomness of persecution, brutality/savagery, the idea of a scapegoat. Each of these in there own way help shape the story into the incredibly marvelous piece it is. For the theme of blindly following tradition the story starts out with everyone in the town seems preoccupied with a black box and the simple act of collecting pebbles. Tradition is a common thing in small towns,
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For the following theme of the randomness of persecution, the ritual of the lottery is designed so that all villagers have the same chance of picking the piece of paper that chooses to kill someone, including the children. This theme is so scary because it shows how quickly the villagers turn on each other. As soon as Tessie Hutchinson picks the piece of paper with the black dot, she loses her identity and everyone starts to throw stones aiming to kill her. This theme is similar to the next theme brutality. The theme of brutality, is popular because the little kids throw pebbles at the people at the post and the parents teach the kids from such a young age that its okay to kill. Tessie Hutchinson is weeping for her life and yet people continue to throw stones. Besides having children kill people what makes it so chilling is that Tessie tried to save her own life by offering to kill her own kid. The final theme is the idea of a scapegoat. The scapegoat is usually the tradition that starts because the society need someone to give the blame to and usually sacrifice “the virgin” which helps for a good harvest or a plentiful year. This is true in The Lottery because one person in the society brings up the desire for a good harvest of Corbin the summer season. This leads to the belief that the community does this for a good
For the following theme of the randomness of persecution, the ritual of the lottery is designed so that all villagers have the same chance of picking the piece of paper that chooses to kill someone, including the children. This theme is so scary because it shows how quickly the villagers turn on each other. As soon as Tessie Hutchinson picks the piece of paper with the black dot, she loses her identity and everyone starts to throw stones aiming to kill her. This theme is similar to the next theme brutality. The theme of brutality, is popular because the little kids throw pebbles at the people at the post and the parents teach the kids from such a young age that its okay to kill. Tessie Hutchinson is weeping for her life and yet people continue to throw stones. Besides having children kill people what makes it so chilling is that Tessie tried to save her own life by offering to kill her own kid. The final theme is the idea of a scapegoat. The scapegoat is usually the tradition that starts because the society need someone to give the blame to and usually sacrifice “the virgin” which helps for a good harvest or a plentiful year. This is true in The Lottery because one person in the society brings up the desire for a good harvest of Corbin the summer season. This leads to the belief that the community does this for a good