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THE LOTTERY
SUMMARY

On a warm day in late June (the 27th, to be exact), villagers gather in the square to
participate in a lottery run by Mr. Summers, who officiates at all the big civic events. The
children arrive first and begin collecting stones until their parents call them to order. Mrs.
Hutchinson arrives late and chats briefly with her friend, Mrs. Delacroix.

Mr. Summers calls each head of the household (always a grown man) forward to a black
wooden box, where each selects a slip of paper. Once the men have chosen, Mr. Summers
allows everyone to open the paper and see who has been selected. It is Bill Hutchinson. His
wife immediately starts protesting – so we get the sense that they're not about to win a
couple million dollars.

There are five people total in the Hutchinson family. Mr. Summers places five slips of paper
into the box and each member of the family draws. Tess (Mrs. Hutchinson) draws a slip of
paper with a big black dot in the centre. Not good. The villagers advance on her, and it
becomes crystal clear what the prize for the lottery really is: a stoning. Tess protests in vain
as the villagers attack her.

Themes

The Danger of Blindly Following Tradition

The village lottery culminates in a violent murder each year, a bizarre ritual that suggests
how dangerous tradition can be when people follow it blindly. Before we know what kind of
lottery they’re conducting, the villagers and their preparations seem harmless, even quaint:
they’ve appointed a rather pathetic man to lead the lottery, and children run about
gathering stones in the town square. Everyone is seems preoccupied with a funny-looking
black box, and the lottery consists of little more than handmade slips of paper. Tradition is
endemic to small towns, a way to link families and generations. Jackson, however, pokes
holes in the reverence that people have for tradition. She writes that the villagers don’t
really know much about the lottery’s origin but try to preserve the tradition nevertheless.

The villagers’ blind acceptance of the lottery has allowed ritual murder to become part of
their town fabric. As they have demonstrated, they feel powerless to change—or even try to
change—anything, although there is no one forcing them to keep things the same. Old Man

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THE LOTTERY

Warner is so faithful to the tradition that he fears the villagers will return to primitive times
if they stop holding the lottery. These ordinary people, who have just come from work or
from their homes and will soon return home for lunch, easily kill someone when they are
told to. And they don’t have a reason for doing it other than the fact that they’ve always
held a lottery to kill someone. If the villagers stopped to question it, they would be forced to
ask themselves why they are committing a murder—but no one stops to question. For them,
the fact that this is tradition is reason enough and gives them all the justification they need.

The Randomness of Persecution

Villagers persecute individuals at random, and the victim is guilty of no transgression other
than having drawn the wrong slip of paper from a box. The elaborate ritual of the lottery is
designed so that all villagers have the same chance of becoming the victim—even children
are at risk. Each year, someone new is chosen and killed, and no family is safe. What makes
“The Lottery” so chilling is the swiftness with which the villagers turn against the victim. The
instant that Tessie Hutchinson chooses the marked slip of paper, she loses her identity as a
popular housewife. Her friends and family participate in the killing with as much enthusiasm
as everyone else. Tessie essentially becomes invisible to them in the fervor of persecution.
Although she has done nothing “wrong,” her innocence doesn’t matter. She has drawn the
marked paper—she has herself become marked—and according to the logic of the lottery,
she therefore must die.

Tessie’s death is an extreme example of how societies can persecute innocent people for
absurd reasons. Present-day parallels are easy to draw, because all prejudices, whether they
are based on race, sex, appearance, religion, economic class, geographical region, family
background, or sexual orientation, are essentially random. Those who are persecuted
become “marked” because of a trait or characteristic that is out of their control—for
example, they are the “wrong” sex or from the “wrong” part of the country. Just as the
villagers in “The Lottery” blindly follow tradition and kill Tessie because that is what they are
expected to do, people in real life often persecute others without questioning why. As
Jackson suggests, any such persecution is essentially random, which is why Tessie’s bizarre
death is so universal.

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Motifs

Family

Family bonds are a significant part of the lottery, but the emphasis on family only heightens
the killing’s cruelty because family members so easily turn against one another. Family ties
form the lottery’s basic structure and execution. In the town square, families stand together
in groups, and every family member must be present. Elaborate lists of heads of families,
heads of households within those families, and household members are created, and these
lists determine which member draws from the box. Family relationships are essential to how
the actions of the lottery are carried out, but these relationships mean nothing the moment
it’s time to stone the unlucky victim. As soon as it’s clear that Tessie has drawn the marked
paper, for example, her husband and children turn on her just as the other villagers do.
Although family relationships determine almost everything about the lottery, they do not
guarantee loyalty or love once the lottery is over.

Rules

The lottery is rife with rules that are arbitrarily followed or disregarded. The intricate rules
the villagers follow suggest that the lottery is an efficient, logical ritual and that there is an
important purpose behind it, whereas the rules that have lapsed, however, reveal the
essential randomness of the lottery’s dark conclusion. Mr. Summers follows an elaborate
system of rules for creating the slips of paper and making up the lists of families. When the
lottery begins, he lays out a series of specific rules for the villagers, including who should
draw slips of paper from the black box and when to open those papers. When someone is
unable to draw, the lottery rules determine who should be next in line. At the same time,
there are ghosts of rules that have been long forgotten or will fully abandoned altogether,
such as those for salutes and songs that accompany Mr. Summer’s induction as the
chairman of the lottery. The fact that some rules have remained while others have
disappeared underscores the disturbing randomness of the murder at the end of the lottery.

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THE LOTTERY

Symbols

The Black Box

The shabby black box represents both the tradition of the lottery and the illogic of the
villagers’ loyalty to it. The black box is nearly falling apart, hardly even black anymore after
years of use and storage, but the villagers are unwilling to replace it. They base their
attachment on nothing more than a story that claims that this black box was made from
pieces of another, older black box. The lottery is filled with similar relics from the past that
have supposedly been passed down from earlier days, such as the creation of family lists
and use of stones. These are part of the tradition, from which no one wants to deviate—the
lottery must take place in just this way because this is how it’s always been done. However,
other lottery traditions have been changed or forgotten. The villagers use slips of paper
instead of wood chips, for example. There is no reason why the villagers should be loyal to
the black box yet disloyal to other relics and traditions, just as there is no logical reason why
the villagers should continue holding the lottery at all.

The Lottery

The lottery represents any action, behaviour, or idea that is passed down from one
generation to the next that’s accepted and followed unquestioningly, no matter how
illogical, bizarre, or cruel. The lottery has been taking place in the village for as long as
anyone can remember. It is a tradition, an annual ritual that no one has thought to question.
It is so much a part of the town’s culture, in fact, that it is even accompanied by an old
adage: “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.” The villagers are fully loyal to it, or, at least,
they tell themselves that they are, despite the fact that many parts of the lottery have
changed or faded away over the years. Nevertheless, the lottery continues, simply because
there has always been a lottery. The result of this tradition is that everyone becomes party
to murder on an annual basis. The lottery is an extreme example of what can happen when
traditions are not questioned or addressed critically by new generations.

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