The Lottery is a famous short story. Many of us have read Shirley Jackson’s 1948 masterpiece.
Conall McManus has written a review of The Lottery, which inspired me to write this article.
My apologies. The above link will likely not work unless you are a Medium member.
The literary success of The Lottery is its many sub-arcs, each culminating to the climax of the protagonist getting stoned by her neighbors. This short story can spawn hours of discussion about human nature.
To me, the main theme of The Lottery is how we continue with traditions that no longer have value.
I’m going to bring up one such tradition:
It is our current democracy
To start, let’s sit down and write a list of traits we would like to see in our political leaders. We might create a list like this:
1) Wisdom
2) Compassion
3) Knowledgeable
4) Knowledge Seeking
5) Collaborative
6) Inclusive
7) Communicative
8) Honest & Trustworthiness
9) Respectful & Respected
10) Mostly free of vices
11) Previous success outside of politics
If your list looks like this list, then the next question should be: “How does my democracy deliver on finding these qualities?”
Let me make a second list of things that constitute today’s democracy:
1) Political parties
2) Noisy campaigns
3) Expensive campaigns
4) Politicians belittling each other
5) Media that are dependent on election revenue
6) General elections
7) Internal party elections
8) Debates
9) Canvassers
10) Lawn signs
11) Political advertising
We do all these political things without thinking much about them. In essence, they have become part of our tradition.
If the things in the second list could get the things in the first list, then we would have a good tradition.
But if the first list seems elusive, then the things in the second list seem rather pointless, don’t they?
Conclusion
Those of us on the outside of Jackson’s The Lottery so easily see how the villagers are foolish in their continuance of the lottery. The villagers look forward to the annual assassination of one of their own — just because it is a tradition. Could not this kind of foolishness manifest itself somewhere else?
So when we will see the things that constitute today’s democracy as foolish traditions?
Published on Medium 2024
To Democratic Canvassers: I tip my hat to you!
