Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a short story that depicts the blind following of tradition. Just because something has been done a certain way for as long as you can remember, does not mean that way is the best way. “The Lottery” also highlights the cruelty of human nature. The willingness of ritualistic murder of colleagues, friends or family. The tradition to stone someone in your community to death annually is truly cruel. It blows my mind how so many people can knowingly partake in the action of murdering someone, someone they more than likely know personally, just because it is a tradition. Nobody questions the morally unjust actions of the tradition. Instead, they act like it is perfectly fine to hit a person with stones repeatedly until that person is dead. It is almost like everyone throws out their emotions for the tradition. I noticed in the story that the oldest person in the community seemed to be the most eager to stone the chosen person. That is
I wonder if some of the people of that community that were involved in the stoning feel guilt from killing somebody. Sure there will be some people that will be emotionally affected by the murder due to a close relationship with the victim, but do distant acquaintances feel that their actions are unjust? I think there would be very few, if any, distant acquaintances that feel poorly about the killing of a person in their community. The “normal” of our lives is much different than the “normal” of the community in “The Lottery”. In “The Lottery”, the “normal” is the stoning of someone each year, so almost all of the community would not think anything of the killing. On the other hand, if a community in real life would do this, there would be an uproar and many people of that community would refuse to participate and most of the people participating would feel terrible about what they