In “The Lottery” one can point out the lack of trust between all of the people. When one person drew a paper out, everyone squirmed with excitement and nervousness. When the paper was open, there would be screaming and shouting saying that the drawing was fixed. The lack of trust throughout the citizens only draws attention to their fear of change.
When someone’s wife was going to draw for her husband, people deemed it as cheating. The wife pulled out a white, blank paper and the whole town would go insane saying it was fixed and she cheated. Their fear of change did not make any sense whatsoever since they had already changed up the tradition. They forgot about the ritual and completely lost the original black box. They changed up the entire tradition by not completely understanding what they were doing.
The final thought I have on this piece is that, although the story seems to be pretty realistic, why would people have the audacity to contact the author and find out where the place was to watch. I know that this last thought is mainly based on the outcome of the story, however the fact that people wanted to see a poor girl get stoned is just unethical. People in the modern world truly do not make any sense to me.
I agree with you that contacting the author regarding the location of this town is pretty uncanny. Hopefully people wanted to know where Jackson’s village was to help save them.
I sensed that people just wanted to watch, or on an even sicker level, they wanted to participate in the stoning when Prof. Udelson mentioned that. This story shows that humans are indeed attracted to violence.