There are obviously many parallels with other stories here, as well as various ethical thought experiments in moral philosophy. It’s much better to people like Old Man Warner that one person be chosen at random (so the process is ‘fair’) and sacrificed for the collective health of the community. People will die if the lottery is not drawn, because the crops will fail and people will starve as a result. To give up the lottery would, in the words of Old Man Warner, be the behaviour of ‘crazy fools’, because he is convinced that the lottery is not only beneficial but essential to the success of the village’s crops. The horrifying part of the story is that the murderous tradition continues even in a seemingly modern, “normal” society.We may scoff at the Carthaginians sacrificing their children to the gods or the Aztecs doing similar, but Jackson’s point is that every age and every culture has its own illogical and even harmful traditions, which are obeyed in the name of ‘tradition’ and in the superstitious belief that they have a beneficial effect. This village has been established as a farming community, so it seems likely that this was the origin of the lottery. The idea behind most primitive human sacrifices was that something (or someone) must die in order for the crops to grow that year. The use of stones also connects the ritual to Biblical punishments of “stoning” people for various sins, which then brings up the idea of the lottery’s victim as a sacrifice. There is no real religious or practical justification for the lottery anymore-it’s just a primitive murder for the sake of tradition.

The line about the stones makes an important point-most of the external trappings of the lottery have been lost or forgotten, but the terrible act at its heart remains.

Dunbar already sent her son away, perhaps to spare him having to participate in murder this year, and now she herself seems to try and avoid taking part in the lottery as well.

The lottery short story