Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery makes several comment about the modern society. One of the major theme in this story is tradition and how people just blindly follow them. A major idea that The lottery reveals is that human beings are capable of behaving unbelievably cruelly when condoned by society and tradition.
The characters in the story don’t seem to appear different in any obvious way. At the start of the story the kids are seen playing around, the wives gathered around and talking, everything seems normal. Normal people in a normal town. That all seemed to changed when they form a group and decide to massacre a member of the community while every other member of the society eagerly participate in the behavior. Since it’s a tradition and been happening for many years, no one seems to question it or try to stop it. The fact that the whole society joins in only contributes to the trend that killing a society member in order to gain some sort of advantage is a righteous thing, when in reality it’s not.
