Summary of The Lottery

The piece “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a story that takes place in a secluded town with a lot of old school like traditions and tendencies. There is one tradition that has been apart of the town for as long as any of the people living in it can remember, this tradition is the lottery. Throughout the passage we are not told what the lottery exactly is until the end but the author does make it clear that most of the town has sour feelings towards this tradition. For the most part all the families want to put the tradition to an end, all but the elders such as the oldest man of the town, old man Warner. When others mention that other towns have stopped this tradition old man Warner argues that they are foolish. It seems he believes that this tradition brings the town good luck. How the lottery works is all the families of the town gather, the girls mingle, the parents congregate, and the young boys collect stones. When everyone is ready the head of each family draws a paper and once every head has a paper they are allowed to look at it to see if they drew the paper that was tagged the night before. The head who has the tagged paper then gathers his family and they move to the draw box to draw papers on their own. Once every family member has a paper they unfold it to reveal who has the tagged paper. When this whole process happens in the story, a mother and wife to a family is stuck with the tagged paper and the author then reveals to us that the one stuck with this tagged paper is to stand in the middle of all the families and get beaten with the stones gathered by the boys prior to the start of the lottery. The piece ends with the mother preparing for her beating and the father devastated.