Themes of "The Lottery"

Themes of The Lottery

By Austin Witthun

Authors Note: This is a short response to “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson about themes that occur in the story.

While there are many themes in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, two stick out the most. Those two are humanity and government control. First I will discuss about how and why the theme humanity is in “The Lottery”. My first reason is that while the village itself seems very normal and humane, the lottery is the opposite. In the lottery the winners do not receive a prize but instead are stoned to death in public, by the public. Even friends of those who have won must throw stones at the winners. If the village were humane, they would stop this even though it is a strong tradition among their people. The people in the village say that other villages have thought about or have stopped doing the lottery which is most likely due to this reason.

The other of the two major themes is government control. One of the reasons that this theme appears in “The Lottery” is because the people of this village are forced to partake in the lottery. It is almost as if the government is forcing this tradition on these people because it is obvious that no one wants to kill their friends or family and, no one wants to be killed either. The chance of getting killed without a doubt strikes fear into everyone that enters the lottery. Unfortunately, these things do happened in “The Lottery”. Although there are many themes that could be in “The Lottery” these two, humanity and government control, are the ones that have the most influence on the story.