Jerry Pan
Composition 2, 30232
Character/Conflict Paper
1 June 2013
Human Weakness In The Lottery, Shirley Jackson tells people follow the tradition no matter how ridiculous the tradition can be, and they can even give up their own family and friends to complete the tradition. Later on, people starts to realize the lottery is meaningless, unfair event that needs to sacrifice people and cannot even grow their corns better. We can have more understanding through characters and conflicts.
Tessie Hutchinson, protagonist, brings her married daughter into this when she gets chosen by the lottery. Her personality is evil and weak. She does not care about lottery in the beginning, but when she gets chosen, she says “There is Don and Eva” (642) to change the result of she is going to be stoned. Parents usually think their children are more valuable than themselves, so they would sacrifice their own life for their children, but it does not happen on Tessie. The villagers, antagonist, starts to realize that a blood sacrifice cannot help them with growing crops better, but they still cannot get over with that completely. They still follow the tradition because an old man Warner has a saying, “Lottery in June, Corn be heavy soon,” (641) but there is no proof on that yet. We also can see villagers start to care less about this tradition from “because so much of the ritual been forgotten or discarded” (639). Also, there are some complicated rituals for the lottery, “but years and years ago this part of the ritual had been allowed to lapse,” (639) we can know that the tradition is slowly being left behind from that text.
The conflict in “The Lottery” is individual vs. Society. Tessie has nothing negative to say to the lottery before drawing; only afterward, when it is too late. She seems like he only one wants to complain about how stupid and pointless this lottery is, but whole villagers still want to stone her. Even “someone