The Lottery

"The Lottery"  By: Shirley Jackson
Theme:  Stoning


In the short story "The Lottery," 1 towns-person a year is chosen at random and stoned to death.  They call this process the lottery.  Every person in the town attends, and 1 person from each family draws a piece of paper from a black box.  If their piece of paper had a black circle on it, they "won," and they were to get stoned.  The stoning was done by the remaining family members and friends.

In the story, the stoning was done so casually that it seemed as though it was an everyday event for the townspeople.  "All right, folks, Mr. Summers said. Let's finish quickly."  Mr. Summers was directing the townspeople to collect the stones and hurry up.  Even friends of the women getting stoned were eager to participate.  "Mrs. Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mr. Dunbar. Come on, she said. Hurry up."

Stoning has been around for many years as a method of killing people.  We don't use this method anymore, but we do use something along the same lines.  When someone has been ordered to be put to death, we use lethal injection.  Although this doesn't include pain like stoning did, it does include an audience.  When someone gets put to death due to a murder or rape, the family members of the victim can come and watch.  This is similar to the stoning because when the towns-person got stoned, everyone was around to watch and even participate.