In the Short story “The
Lottery” by Shirley Jackson the “The 'tribal'
nature of a small community is to stick together and try not to stray away from
traditions. In which there tradition is to have a “Lottery”, in the end there
is not winning but a stoning of someone in the community. Coming from a small
community I can understand having traditions and not straying from them. Our
small town annual events are the Raspberry festival, the Idaho County Fair,
also some companies and the church puts on Barbecue during the summer.
The festival, fair, and barbecues we
put on are mostly for everyone together as a community. Talk about how their
family is doing, crops, weather, and it is a great time for new and old gossip
to travel around. The lottery is just a reason for the community to get a break
from there every day lives and gossip with everyone. They really do not like this
tradition but traditions are hard to break, especially in smaller communities. We
used to have buggy whip, which is when people from all around bring their old
cars and show them off. It was a great time for kids to run around, for the
women to gossip, and the men to drink. Then I got the point that I was just one
big drunk fest and people got hurt, and things got stolen or damaged. Even though
it was great fun we had to stop because it was getting out of hand. It was hard
straying away from that tradition but it need to be done.
