Single Source Essay Over Short Story Essays

Single Source Essay Over Short Story Essays Single Source Essay Over Short Story Essay Single Source Essay Over Short Story Essay Shirley Jackson’s story The Lottery illustrates a village and the citizens caught up in tradition and the past. It is like a place caught in time, where progress is slow to come. While hints of progress show here and there, the core of the village and the people within it are based in a time many years before. They seem incapable of taking the steps necessary to burgeon into a truly modern town of the time, nor do they seem to want to.The setting is casual, even idyllic. It could be any vllage in the world, and the people could easily be anyone’s neighbors. It   is difficult to picture a more normal scene than is represented in the first two or three paragraphs.   It is only when you progress a little farther that seems get curious, and even then it appears to be some sort of celebration   that will result in someone gaining some great prize.Hints of the village’s anachronism come early on, in the form of the obvious division of the sexes. While the men gathered first, â€Å"speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes† (para 3), the women followed them in their â€Å"faded house dresses and sweaters† (para 3), gossiping together. The behavior of the children indicates that they know who is in charge, coming only after being called several times by their mothers, showing them far less respect than Bobby Martin does to his father, who he obeys immediately.Later in the story, this obvious patriarchal view of life becomes even more obvious as it is the men who draw the lots, or the oldest boy, if old enough, if the man is unable due to injury or death. The one woman who is allowed to draw a lot only does so because her son is not yet old enough to take that responsibility, and judging from the reactions and words of the other villagers, it seems highly to be a highly unnatural state of things.Everything about the story lends credence to the idea that these people live in the past, but nothing mo re so than their lottery. This tradition is something to which they hold on fiercely, any mention of other towns who have given up the practice being met with scorn. Mr. Warner, the oldest man in the village, expresses the sentiment of at least most of the villagers rather succinctly as he states â€Å"There’s always been a lottery† (para 32), expecting that reason to validate the practice and speaking with obvious scorn and disgust about those who have left the tradition behind.Even Tessie Hutchinson, who through her earlier actions might seem to have a reluctance to continue the practice, does not dispute its validity in the end. Instead, she can only declare how unfair it was that her family, and specifically herself, was chosen, even to the extent that she attempted to decrease her own chances of being the one to die by insisting that her oldest, married daughter draw with the family. She never goes so far as to dispute the need for the lottery, simply her own posi tion as the sacrificial lamb.Jackson further perpetuates the feeling that the villagers will not soon let go of their valued tradition, as the baton passes to yet another generation as Tessie’s son Davy was given pebbles of his own to throw so that he could contribute to the death of his own mother and thus continue the cycle in later years.Through this story, we can see the dangers of not letting go of the past and of letting progress pass us by. Such violent and barbaric traditions can only make the dark monsters within ourselves grow, even if all outward appearances belie the truth of that inhumanity.