In the short story, the Lottery, it tells how the people of a village stone someone to death every year. It is tradition that comes once every year. The winner of the lottery is the that ends up dying. The theme is that you can not blindly follow traditions.
It takes place in a small town in contemporary America. Most of the villages have banned the lottery, but one village in the north still does it. Every year, on June of July 27th a person takes out a slip of paper. The local children prepare stones for them all, even the toddlers. The person with the name on the paper gets stoned.
In my opinion, I think the theme is you cannot blindly follow traditions without knowing the consequences. In this case, even the children are getting the stones and killing their parents. The story also tells of mob psychology. People today act cruelly just because there is a big mob doing it. When the people go stone someone, most do it because everyone else is doing it. Would you jump off a cliff if your friend did it? Also, it shows people being bad because of a group being bad.
Therefore, this is what I think of the short story, The Lottery.
