Lottery

In the Short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. The “tribal” aspect of a community is how we enjoy getting together and doing things as a group or “tribe”. In the “Lottery” the community gets together to perform their form of the lottery. But this lottery is not just any normal lottery this lottery consists of everyone drawing papers out of a black box and then the one with the ash on the paper, there family gets to redraw and whoever from their family draws the paper with the ash on it gets stoned. Before they start drawing out of the black box they are just standing around talking about stuff that has happened in the community and how everyone is doing as if they were getting together for some happy reunion. This is where the aspect of tradition comes because they don’t get together for any other occasions other than this “Lottery” then when they do get together even though it is extremely tragic they enjoy the social gathering and traditional aspect of it.

In a community such as where I was raised, tradition and community gatherings are completely different. Some of the gatherings that we have are the Homecoming game for football in which almost everyone in the community comes and shows there support. The Idaho County Fair where everyone in the community at least makes an appearance for either the food or to see the farm animals and all of the artistic designs displayed in the buildings. When people come to these events they come to talk about recent things that have happened in are community and to see friends that they haven’t seen in a while. It is a joyous celebration and it does not end in a stoning. Even though the community from the short story “The Lottery” has a terrible, terrible tradition it is the only way that the community can get together and reminisce even if it ends terribly.