Year after year after year for as long as the villagers can remember, there has been an annual lottery, which comes from “One of the ancient practices that modern man deplores as inhumanely evil is the annual sacrifice of a scapegoat…for the benefit of the community (Friedman 63).” The “benefit” behind the lottery seems to be a ritualistic cleansing of the village from its sins. The villager chos

When societies form, the basis for maintaining those societies is founded. The village in “The Lottery” is no different. Everybody knows his or her station in life, whether it be a farmer or mailman, and everybody accepts it. The general cold-bloodedness that each member of the community extends to everyone else is also cruelly accepted. During the lottery, any one of the members of the community could be killed. Each and every member knows this, and has known it. The acceptance of the lottery as a means of scapegoating from the time they were children has nullified the general humanity of the populace. Because every villager is aware of the possible consequences of the lottery and has accepted it, the village itself operates on a normal day to day basis, just as any other village or town would. The villagers meet each other with a casual coolness, and are almost excited as to the day’s event. The inhumanity in this is generated by the learned habits of the collected society, not by any inherent human nature.

It is interesting to note that human beings have a tendency to lean toward life instincts rather than to death instincts. The life instincts of a population have an effect that seems to indicate an inborn capacity for committing evil, although the instinct just intensifies the learned evil. By wanting to remain alive, the villagers take a “to each his own” type of stance: “…when the chips are down, everybody wants just one thing – to save his own skin (Cervo 183).” When it becomes evident to Tessie Hutchinson that her family has been chosen, and that she may be the selected one she states that “…it wasn’t fair. You didn’t give him [Bill Hutchinson] time enough to choose. Everybody saw that.” It is clear that the life instincts for her family and herself surfaced, even though she is quite familiar with the custom and would have agreed to it had it not the lottery chosen her. Soon it becomes necessary that Tessie’s own life instincts take over those for her family. This “reveals the fragility of the nuclear family” by demonstrating that even the closest of ties are not match for the superiority of the lottery by “which the lottery effectively divides [the family] into competing individuals whose survival needs are at odds with one another (Whittier 353).” After it became apparent that Tessie had indeed been chosen as the scapegoat

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1675
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)