Shirely Jackson's Critique of Tradition in The Lottery

Shirely Jackson, writer of many art works, in her short story “The Lottery” (1948) argues that tradition should not be followed in every situation when men are always first, and women take the backseat. Jackson shows her argument with different examples that include traditional living versus newer living. She writes to an audience of all ages as shown with her style of writing that can be related to everyone who reads her work. Jackson begins her first claim by showing that men are the head of the house and women are put second. In the short story it says, “Mr. Summers, who had time and energy to devote to civic activities.” Men have higher ranks than women, and they are seen to the only ones who can handle things such as “The Lottery. Women are unworthy to do the job of a man. In other words, women could not do the same things as men because they were not allowed to be exactly equal to a man. This only shows the predominance side of living with a man during this time.

Traditional is also seem because the man is out working, and women stay at home to clean and cook all day. After traditional living is seem in different ways, the author moves to newer living when she says that it looked down upon. Jackson writes, “Old Man Warner snorted. ‘Pack of crazy folks,’ he said. ‘Listening to the young folks, nothing good enough for them. They was trying to say that young people always want to challenge old traditions. Young people do not always want to follow traditions when better could come their way. They saw the lottery as a waste of time and others soon the other town realized. Tradition is being broken, and the author wants it to be seen throughout the short story. To close the short story, Jackson argues that women are treated unfairly. “The Lottery” says, “It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair’, Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.” In this quote the author is saying showing how everyone tried to hurt the woman by throwing rocks at her. It is not fair that a woman gets treated badly in any situation. She should have not suffered, but since she made the wrong decision she is looked at differently. She spoke up for what she believes, but the men look at her like she is crazy. She just wanted to be heard. Traditionally, women had to do everything that their husband told do no matter what it was at the time. In today’s society women do not have to everything for their husband. Tradition is always followed, but it does not always need to be shown. Men seem to put their wife second when it does not have to be the case every time.

As time passes, society changes and people do not like tradition as much. Women are also looked down upon for speaking their minds. During this time, women were seen as a man’s shadow. In Ms. Jackson short story, she wrote about the traditional ways that needed to be challenged or changed, and she argues her point when she shows the event called “The Lottery.”