mervalkn 's review for:

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

3.0

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while there are so many cases of normalized violence in the name of tradition and all human beings can be driven to savagery in specific circumstances i think this story weakens the point its trying to make by keeping the mechanism vague and ignoring how these traditions are able to be carried on in the first place. in almost every real life example there's a clear line between those who are subjected to senseless cruelty and those who label them as the 'other', dehumanize them and directly or indirectly benefit from their suffering. in non lethal cases such as circumcisation, tribal coming of age rituals etc. it is possible for people to bond through shared suffering and accept it as a necessary step for social acceptance but a tradition where everyone has equal chance and the consequence is getting literally stoned to death would have very little chance of surviving. in the story there are signs of power dynamics and the possibility of the lottery being tampered with but if the purpose is to show how easy it is for regular people to perpetuate harm bc "its how its always been" i think the ones who walk away from omelas did a better job. also lord of the flies is a much more chilling and psychologically plausiblr story about the dark side of humans. or u could just read a history book idk