Shirley Jacksons the lottery takes place in a little town the 27th of June. The children of the town are playing on this beautiful summer day; they are picking up stones some pocket while the others pile the stones in the town square. The town’s people then begin to after the children the men arrive then finally the women in that order. The families stand beside one another the person in charge of the lottery is a man by the name of Mr. Summers. Mr. Summers is usually the person who oversees important events in this town so naturally he runs the lottery. Mr. Summers comes into the town with the black box; right after Mr. Graves who is the town’s postmaster arrives. The black box is withered and beat up but this box is not the original, The original box was lost over a period of time. Mr. Summers has suggested that the towns people replace the box because the condition of the current one. No one wants to break tradition, he did get them to change the people to change the traditional woodchips for slips of white paper. Summers then mixes the slips of paper in the black box. Summers and Graves made the slips the night before the lottery. Right before the lottery begins the two men both make a list of all the families in the town. Summers is then sworn in, some of the older people remember that there was a time that there had been a song and a salute but those traditions have faded. Tessie Hutchinson arrives late to the Lottery on her way to her husband’s side she pauses to talk with a friend of hers. She is upset that she forgot today was the lottery. Mr. Summers addresses the crowd about the rules of the lottery names of the families be called heads of the families come up to draw a slip of paper. It is said that the people in the north village may stop the lottery. Old man Warner the village elder is disgusted with this rumor. Old man Warner says that the lottery is necessary otherwise the people would return to living in caves. It is also said that other villages had already stopped doing the lottery in response all Old Man Warner says that’s “nothing but trouble.” After the names were called Mr. Summers everyone opens their papers. Bill Hutchinson has been chosen this means his family is in the chopping block so to speak. Immediately Tessie Bills wife begins complaining about how this wasn’t fair. Mr. Graves dumps the paper in a pile and outs the five names of the members of the Hutchinson family, everyone pulls and Tessie opens the slip with the black spot.
The people of this small town begin to grab stones and run toward Tessie who is standing now in the middle of the square. Tessie exclaims it’s not fair she gets hit in the head. The entire town is now stoning Tessie. This is a story of a town stuck in a murderous tradition countless lives have been taken and for nothing more than an old tradition. The setting of the town is just simple peaceful. You think of a beautiful summer’s day the birds are chirping the sun beams shining ever so brightly upon this quiet little town. Nothing suggests that this will be a scene of death in a matter of hours and this shows that everything is not as it seems. No matter how good something looks on the outside on the inside it could be rotted out. This tradition of holding this lottery has been going on for as long as anyone in the town can remember even the oldest member Old Man Warner. In the story it is said that other villages spoke on stopping the lottery and others have stopped it all together. Old Man Warner believes that if the lottery was to end then chaos would follow the society or structure would fall. The only changes in the towns traditions have come from suggestions by Mr. Summers he seems to want something almost anything to change. He got the people to replace the woodchips with slips of paper. Although this is a small change