In The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, a community is afflicted with the inability of questioning their assumption, which by chance is executing a fellow townsfolk as a fertility rite.

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Scotty Abram Himmer

Sister Ariel Lovett Chaffin

English 101

October 17th, 2012

How To Make a Donkey

        The ability of asking questions fearlessly has been said to be a quality of only the smartest of people. Tommy MacWilliam, an Harvard student who writes upon the difference between average Harvard students like him and Turing Award winners, concluded that “smart people don’t take claims at face value... smart people don’t rest until they find an explanation they’re comfortable accepting and understanding.” Studies have found that those who question their circumstances are significantly more likely to live a more effective, efficient, and overall a happier life than those who don’t. In “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, a community is afflicted with the inability of questioning their assumption, which by chance is executing a fellow townsfolk as a fertility rite. “The Lottery”’ is a symbol of the necessity of questioning the assumptions in our lives, as evident by the use of an adage by Old Man Warner, the discontinuation of needless details of the lottery, and the obvious harm it does to the community.

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In the 33rd paragraph, Old Man Warner gave a saying about the lottery, “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.” This adage is an example of how superstition works; an explanation is not always necessary to reason why an event causes good or bad things to happen, sometimes it just occurs. One can also describe this adage as an assumption, not once did Old Man Warner push to understand how the execution benefited their crops. Mr. Warner accepted what was passed onto him as a child and dogmatically adhered to it.

At times the community recognized certain parts of the ritual ...

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