"The Lottery" Response

Authors note: This is a response to the short story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson.

Have you ever been part of a lottery where you do not want to win. In the story "The Lottery" winning the lottery is the last thing any of the villagers would want. Victory leads to certain death at the hand of the rest of the villagers.

One theme in this story is humanity vs. inhumanity. The villagers think that the process of the lottery is a humane event, when in fact it is the exact opposite. Other villages received attention in the story after dropping the lottery. The villages still using the lottery looked at this as insane when it was actually an act of the other villages giving up inhumanity activities.

Another theme in this story was power. The government had complete power over everyone in the community throughout the whole story. For example those who won the raffle had no choice but to get stoned. Another example of power in the story was in the households in the village. Men had complete power over women. In the lottery the men drew for the women and if there was no man to do this then the woman's son would draw for her, they didn't even have the right to draw. Power is a common theme in this story.

There are many possible themes for this story but these are the two that seemed to stand out to me the most.