Love in "The Lottery".

The first short story I’ve chosen is called “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson. The story takes place in a small village in the present time. Villagers gather once a year in the main square to hold a lottery where the “winner” does not win money but is stoned to death as a kind of sacrifice to obtain a good harvest. Although villagers seem to be nervous, especially when the moment of announcing who the winner is comes, and some of them believe the lottery should be cancelled, they see the event as something common and natural.  Even the winner’s own family and friends pick up stones in order to kill him or her.

The story is really shocking. It made me think that sometimes love is not enough in our world. The situation presented in the story has been taken to an extreme, because sacrifices in fact took place in some civilizations in the past and the person sacrificed was killed not by all the members of the community but by a priest or some kind of special authority, for example. However, in this story even those strongly connected to the victim by kinship or friendship have the right and the obligation of throwing stones to him or her. So I paid special attention to the characters that represent Tessie Hutchinson’s (the victim) family: her husband Bill Hutchinson and her three children, Bill Jr., Nancy and little David (who is even given a few pebbles to stone his mum) participate in the lottery of course and do not hesitate at stoning her own wife and mother. These characters show that love sometimes looses the battle against authority and violence. In my opinion, neither a good harvest nor authority are reasons to harm a person I love. Violence is never the path to obtain a benefit.

The story is a kind of metaphor which shows the inhumanity present in our lives and a dramatization of the pointless violence. Tessie’s family allows brutality and hostility to kill the love they feel for her. Of course, as I said before, this situation has been taken to an extreme and there is not good reason to make a person I love suffer. But isn’t it true that we sometimes behave aggressively if we get angry with those we love? Don’t we have arguments, verbally attack and shout to friends and family? Is there a point in acting violently if we can solve our problems peacefully?

In our world, as in the story, love is sometimes not enough – violence is stronger.