English ISU- Introduction

The story I picked for my ISU is The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson. I chose it because of the theme, which is “the dangers of blindly following traditions (common widespread behaviours)”. In the story, the village holds the lottery every year to see who would be stoned to death, rather than winning money. This was a very old tradition and as Old Man Warner said, “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.” This meant that if they sacrificed somebody in June, then the crops would prosper and be ready to harvest later on. This tradition has been going on for so long that there isn’t a time that anyone can remember that it didn’t happen. So everyone follows it just because of the fact that it has always happened. This need to follow tradition is also depicted when the villagers don’t change the black box even though it’s falling apart. As the theme suggests, the villagers blindly follow the tradition of the lottery without question. I chose three texts to explore the thematic connections. The first text I chose was a picture of people burning “witches” at the stake. The thematic link between The Lottery and this image is that in both cases they kill someone because people believed that they needed to be killed for the better. The second text I chose was a play called Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Between these two texts, the thematic link is that in both stories is that the people do things just because things have been always like that. Finally, the last text I chose is a Youtube clip of sati pratha. Sati pratha is an old tradition where a widow commits suicide by burning herself alive and even if the widow doesn’t want to kill herself, she is forced too. Just like in The Lottery, the old tradition is kept going for many years and not questioned.