Themes of the Story "The Lottery' by Shirley Jackson

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The Lottery
The lottery was written as a close story of the relation of human being beings to each other. The story reveals the truth of humans being trapped in their traditions and the rituals associated with the traditions. It also shows the habit of humans to choose goats when faced with problems. The goat was used by ancient nations as a receptacle of evil, darkness, and sins done by the people. In the context of this story, Hutchinson Tessie happens to be the goat where all the evil of her people is to be banished in her. She hence falls a victim of a tradition which the people follow to the latter.
The issue of the stoning of Tessie is because of her disloyal nature towards the ritual practice. Most of the villagers are afraid of being disloyal because they may end up being chosen as the lottery. The lottery was some belief the villagers had been told that for the crops to be plentiful a sacrifice was to be made. The people in the village know that sacrificing people is bad but still, no one can speak against it because of fear of being disloyal to the community or that something may interfere with their corn production in seasons.
One of the themes of the story is rituals and traditions and how they influence man in the society. In the story, the people believed in the sacrificing of an animal or a human being in order to appease supernatural beings that in turn fertilize their farms which were perceived to lead to the plentiful harvest of corn. This practice was mostly carried out in June. According to the Old man Warner, he says that corn can be heavy soon with the lottery being in June. The lottery takes more than two days in places where the population is large and less than two hours in less populated areas.
The ritual is taken to be so sacred that going against it is taken to be society disloyalty. The villagers tend to know that sacrificing other human beings is an inhumane act but would still not be courageous enough to go against the tradition. This tradition is virtual that quitting it becomes a problem as portrayed by Old man Warner who responds to Mrs. Adams statement which says that other villages quitted and he says that quitting is trouble.
The ritual has different steps that have to be followed. There were the lists to compose house heads or family leaders. The lists also contained the members of each family. Then there was the swearing in of the person carrying the black box and the person was Mr. Summers. There was also reciting a sort by the officials and tuneless chant that was preceded by a pre-function. There was also salutation which was to be used to address to each person who drew from the box. This shows that the ritual and traditions are systematic just like modern ways of doing activities.
The punishment was given as part of disobedience. In the village, the people feared to be rebellious or disloyal...