Character List

Tessie Hutchinson - The unlucky loser of the lottery. Tessie draws the paper
with the black mark on it and is stoned to death. She is excited about the
lottery and fully willing to participate every year, but when her familys name is
drawn, she protests that the lottery isnt fair. Tessie arrives at the village
square late because she forgot what day it was.
Read an in-depth analysis of Tessie Hutchinson.

Old Man Warner - The oldest man in the village. Old Man Warner has
participated in seventy-seven lotteries. He condemns the young people in
other villages who have stopped holding lotteries, believing that the lottery
keeps people from returning to a barbaric state.
Read an in-depth analysis of Old Man Warner.

Mr. Summers - The man who conducts the lottery. Mr. Summers prepares
the slips of paper that go into the black box and calls the names of the people
who draw the papers. The childless owner of a coal company, he is one of the
village leaders.
Read an in-depth analysis of Mr. Summers.

Bill Hutchinson - Tessies husband. Bill first draws the marked paper, but he
picks a blank paper during the second drawing. He is fully willing to show
everyone that his wife, Tessie, has drawn the marked paper.

Mr. Harry Graves - The postmaster. Mr. Graves helps Mr. Summers prepare
the papers for the lottery and assists him during the ritual.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Themes
THE DANGER OF BLINDLY FOLLOWING TRADITION

The village lottery culminates in a violent murder each year, a bizarre ritual
that suggests how dangerous tradition can be when people follow it blindly.
Before we know what kind of lottery theyre conducting, the villagers and their
preparations seem harmless, even quaint: theyve appointed a rather pathetic
man to lead the lottery, and children run about gathering stones in the town
square. Everyone is seems preoccupied with a funny-looking black box, and
the lottery consists of little more than handmade slips of paper. Tradition is
endemic to small towns, a way to link families and generations. Jackson,
however, pokes holes in the reverence that people have for tradition. She
writes that the villagers dont really know much about the lotterys origin but try
to preserve the tradition nevertheless.

The villagers blind acceptance of the lottery has allowed ritual murder to
become part of their town fabric. As they have demonstrated, they feel
powerless to changeor even try to changeanything, although there is no
one forcing them to keep things the same. Old Man Warner is so faithful to the
tradition that he fears the villagers will return to primitive times if they stop
holding the lottery. These ordinary people, who have just come from work or
from their homes and will soon return home for lunch, easily kill someone
when they are told to. And they dont have a reason for doing it other than the
fact that theyve always held a lottery to kill someone. If the villagers stopped
to question it, they would be forced to ask themselves why they are
committing a murderbut no one stops to question. For them, the fact that
this is tradition is reason enough and gives them all the justification they need.

THE RANDOMNESS OF PERSECUTION

Villagers persecute individuals at random, and the victim is guilty of no

transgression other than having drawn the wrong slip of paper from a box. The
elaborate ritual of the lottery is designed so that all villagers have the same
chance of becoming the victimeven children are at risk. Each year,
someone new is chosen and killed, and no family is safe. What makes The
Lottery so chilling is the swiftness with which the villagers turn against the
victim. The instant that Tessie Hutchinson chooses the marked slip of paper,
she loses her identity as a popular housewife. Her friends and family
participate in the killing with as much enthusiasm as everyone else. Tessie
essentially becomes invisible to them in the fervor of persecution. Although
she has done nothing wrong, her innocence doesnt matter. She has drawn
the marked papershe has herself become markedand according to the
logic of the lottery, she therefore must die.

Tessies death is an extreme example of how societies can persecute innocent

people for absurd reasons. Present-day parallels are easy to draw, because
all prejudices, whether they are based on race, sex, appearance, religion,
economic class, geographical region, family background, or sexual
orientation, are essentially random. Those who are persecuted become
marked because of a trait or characteristic that is out of their controlfor
example, they are the wrong sex or from the wrong part of the country. Just
as the villagers in The Lottery blindly follow tradition and kill Tessie because
that is what they are expected to do, people in real life often persecute others
without questioning why. As Jackson suggests, any such persecution is
essentially random, which is why Tessies bizarre death is so universal.

Motifs

FAMILY

Family bonds are a significant part of the lottery, but the emphasis on family
only heightens the killings cruelty because family members so easily turn
against one another. Family ties form the lotterys basic structure and
execution. In the town square, families stand together in groups, and every
family member must be present. Elaborate lists of heads of families, heads of
households within those families, and household members are created, and
these lists determine which member draws from the box. Family relationships
are essential to how the actions of the lottery are carried out, but these
relationships mean nothing the moment its time to stone the unlucky victim.
As soon as its clear that Tessie has drawn the marked paper, for example, her
husband and children turn on her just as the other villagers do. Although
family relationships determine almost everything about the lottery, they do not
guarantee loyalty or love once the lottery is over.

RULES

The lottery is rife with rules that are arbitrarily followed or disregarded. The
intricate rules the villagers follow suggest that the lottery is an efficient, logical
ritual and that there is an important purpose behind it, whereas the rules that
have lapsed, however, reveal the essential randomness of the lotterys dark
conclusion. Mr. Summers follows an elaborate system of rules for creating the
slips of paper and making up the lists of families. When the lottery begins, he
lays out a series of specific rules for the villagers, including who should draw
slips of paper from the black box and when to open those papers. When
someone is unable to draw, the lottery rules determine who should be next in
line. At the same time, there are ghosts of rules that have been long forgotten
or willfully abandoned altogether, such as those for salutes and songs that
accompany Mr. Summers induction as the chairman of the lottery. The fact
that some rules have remained while others have disappeared underscores
the disturbing randomness of the murder at the end of the lottery.

Symbols

THE BLACK BOX

The shabby black box represents both the tradition of the lottery and the illogic
of the villagers loyalty to it. The black box is nearly falling apart, hardly even
black anymore after years of use and storage, but the villagers are unwilling to
replace it. They base their attachment on nothing more than a story that
claims that this black box was made from pieces of another, older black box.
The lottery is filled with similar relics from the past that have supposedly been
passed down from earlier days, such as the creation of family lists and use of
stones. These are part of the tradition, from which no one wants to deviate
the lottery must take place in just this way because this is how its always
been done. However, other lottery traditions have been changed or forgotten.
The villagers use slips of paper instead of wood chips, for example. There is
no reason why the villagers should be loyal to the black box yet disloyal to
other relics and traditions, just as there is no logical reason why the villagers
should continue holding the lottery at all.

THE LOTTERY

The lottery represents any action, behavior, or idea that is passed down from
one generation to the next thats accepted and followed unquestioningly, no
matter how illogical, bizarre, or cruel. The lottery has been taking place in the
village for as long as anyone can remember. It is a tradition, an annual ritual
that no one has thought to question. It is so much a part of the towns culture,
in fact, that it is even accompanied by an old adage: Lottery in June, corn be
heavy soon. The villagers are fully loyal to it, or, at least, they tell themselves
that they are, despite the fact that many parts of the lottery have changed or
faded away over the years. Nevertheless, the lottery continues, simply
because there has always been a lottery. The result of this tradition is that
everyone becomes party to murder on an annual basis. The lottery is an
extreme example of what can happen when traditions are not questioned or
addressed critically by new generations.

Plot Overview
The villagers of a small town gather together in the square on June 27, a
beautiful day, for the town lottery. In other towns, the lottery takes longer, but
there are only 300 people in this village, so the lottery takes only two hours.
Village children, who have just finished school for the summer, run around
collecting stones. They put the stones in their pockets and make a pile in the
square. Men gather next, followed by the women. Parents call their children
over, and families stand together.

Mr. Summers runs the lottery because he has a lot of time to do things for the
village. He arrives in the square with the black box, followed by Mr. Graves,
the postmaster. This black box isnt the original box used for the lottery
because the original was lost many years ago, even before the town
elder, Old Man Warner, was born. Mr. Summers always suggests that they
make a new box because the current one is shabby, but no one wants to fool
around with tradition. Mr. Summers did, however, convince the villagers to
replace the traditional wood chips with slips of paper.

Mr. Summers mixes up the slips of paper in the box. He and Mr. Graves made
the papers the night before and then locked up the box at Mr. Summerss coal
company. Before the lottery can begin, they make a list of all the families and
households in the village. Mr. Summers is sworn in. Some people remember
that in the past there used to be a song and salute, but these have been lost.

Tessie Hutchinson joins the crowd, flustered because she had forgotten that
today was the day of the lottery. She joins her husband and children at the
front of the crowd, and people joke about her late arrival. Mr. Summers asks
whether anyone is absent, and the crowd responds that Dunbar isnt there.
Mr. Summers asks who will draw for Dunbar, and Mrs. Dunbar says she will
because she doesnt have a son whos old enough to do it for her. Mr.
Summers asks whether the Watson boy will draw, and he answers that he will.
Mr. Summers then asks to make sure that Old Man Warner is there too.
Mr. Summers reminds everyone about the lotterys rules: hell read names,
and the family heads come up and draw a slip of paper. No one should look at
the paper until everyone has drawn. He calls all the names, greeting each
person as they come up to draw a paper. Mr. Adams tells Old Man Warner
that people in the north village might stop the lottery, and Old Man Warner
ridicules young people. He says that giving up the lottery could lead to a
return to living in caves. Mrs. Adams says the lottery has already been given
up in other villages, and Old Man Warner says thats nothing but trouble.

Mr. Summers finishes calling names, and everyone opens his or her papers.
Word quickly gets around that Bill Hutchinson has got it. Tessie argues that it
wasnt fair because Bill didnt have enough time to select a paper. Mr.
Summers asks whether there are any other households in the Hutchinson
family, and Bill says no, because his married daughter draws with her
husbands family. Mr. Summers asks how many kids Bill has, and he answers
that he has three. Tessie protests again that the lottery wasnt fair.

Mr. Graves dumps the papers out of the box onto the ground and then puts
five papers in for the Hutchinsons. As Mr. Summers calls their names, each
member of the family comes up and draws a paper. When they open their
slips, they find that Tessie has drawn the paper with the black dot on it. Mr.
Summers instructs everyone to hurry up.

The villagers grab stones and run toward Tessie, who stands in a clearing in
the middle of the crowd. Tessie says its not fair and is hit in the head with a
stone. Everyone begins throwing stones at her.

Important Quotations Explained

1. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but
no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black
box.
This quotation, from the fifth paragraph of the story, reveals how firmly
entrenched the villagers are in the lotterys tradition and how threatening they
find the idea of change. The villagers have no good reason for wanting to
keep the black box aside from a vague story about the boxs origins, and the
box itself is falling apart. Beyond shabby, it barely resembles a box now, but
the villagers, who seem to take such pride in the ritual of the lottery, do not
seem to care about the boxs appearance. They just want the box to stay the
same. Their strident belief that the box must not change suggests that they
fear change itself, as though one change might lead to other changes.
Already, some towns have stopped holding lotteries, but these villagers do not
seem to be headed in that direction. Instead, they hold firm to the parts of the
tradition that remain, afraid to alter even this seemingly insignificant part of it
for fear of starting down a slippery slope.

2. Although Mr. Summers and everyone else in the village knew the answer
perfectly well, it was the business of the official of the lottery to ask such
questions formally.

This quotation appears about halfway through the story, just before the
drawing of names begins. Mr. Summers has asked Mrs. Dunbar whether her
son, Horace, will be drawing for the family in Mr. Dunbars absence, even
though everyone knows Horace is still too young. There is no purpose to the
question, other than that the question is part of the tradition, and so Mr.
Summers adheres to the rule despite the fact that it seems absurd. Even
though other parts of the ritual have changed or been discarded over the
years, this rule holds firm for absolutely no logical reason. Large things, such
as songs and salutes, have slipped away, and wood chips have been
replaced with slips of paper. Yet this silly, pointless questioning continues. The
villagers seem strident in their adherence to the tradition. Old Man Warner, in
particular, is adamant that tradition must be upheld and the lottery must
continue. But the reality is that there is no consistency among what rules are
followed and which are discarded. This lack of logic makes the villagers blind
observance of the ritual even more problematic because the tradition they
claim to be upholding is actually flimsy and haphazard.

3. Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black
box, they still remembered to use stones.

This quotation, which appears near the end of the story, distills the lottery
down to its essence: murder. The villagers may talk of tradition, ritual, and
history, but the truthas this quotation makes clearis that the traditional
parts of it have long been discarded. The original ritual and box may indeed
have borne along a tradition, violent and bizarre as it may be, but now, without
the original trappings, songs, and procedures, all that remains is the violence.
The haphazard ritual, the bits and pieces that have been slapped together into
some semblance of the original, have led to this essential moment of killing.
The villagers are all too eager to embrace what remains, eagerly picking up
the stones and carrying on the tradition for another year.