Themes

One recurring theme in “The Lottery” is tradition.  The entire story is about a cruel and twisted tradition among a village in which one person every year is beaten to death by stones.  Traditions are usually thought of as tranquil, meaningful, and happy events but in this story, the tradition is violent, pointless, and extremely sad.  Mr. Summers was appalled when he heard that a village nearby decided to stop doing the lottery. What he and nobody else in the story understands is that traditions are supposed to be meaningful.  Nobody knows why the village still participates in the lottery so this defeats the purpose of a tradition.  All of the villagers are blindly following a tradition that is very dangerous.

Families are a large part of “The Lottery”.  At the drawing of slips from the black box, every member of each family must be present before the event begins.  When the victim is picked, it seems to not matter whether it is your wife, brother, sister, son, or mother, whoever is chosen is stoned to death by every member of the village including family members.  Tessie is the unlucky “winner” of the lottery and when it is decided she will die, a villager handed Tessie’s son a stone throw.  This story shows how quickly family members turn on each other in a cruel situation.