A lottery is a game in which numbers are drawn to determine a winner. Modern state lotteries are usually gambling-type games in which a person or group pays a fee for a chance to win a prize (money, goods, services, property, etc). The casting of lots as a method of making decisions and determining fate has a long record, going back at least to the biblical account of Joseph and his brothers and also recorded in the medieval towns of the Low Countries where public lotteries were used to raise money for town improvements and the poor.

What Shirley Jackson shows through the villagers in her story is how blind acceptance of tradition allows something like ritual murder to be normalized. She points out that the villagers cannot even imagine doing something different, and she shows how they are unable to accept Tessie Hutchinson for what she is. The villagers are able to kill her because they have accepted this practice as a way of life and believe that it has always been done.

While the villagers in Jackson’s story are not exactly representative of all people, there is some validity to this criticism. Critics of the state lottery point out that it promotes gambling, increases taxes on those least able to afford them, is prone to corruption, and is a major source of illegal gambling activity. Furthermore, studies have shown that those from lower-income neighborhoods participate in the lottery at disproportionately higher rates than their percentage of the population.