The Lottery

     In "The Lottery," by Shirley Jackson, the theme of stoning comes up.  The characters in this story thought it was perfectly natural to stone a fellow community member to death.  The children eagerly gather rocks in to piles before the drawing starts.  In the short film some of the children even try to gain a head start to the stoning by shoving some of the smaller rocks in their pockets.  This is a very odd theme to come up in this type of short story, especially since stoning isn't all that popular in the United States.  I think it is interesting that stoning comes up in this story for two reasons.  The first reason being that the concept of stoning is seen in the Bible.  I'm not a religious person, but I know this from reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, where a woman dies by stoning.  The killer is very religious and we learn the reason: "A woman who is a medium or sorceress shall be put to death by stoning."  This leads me to the second reason I find the theme of stoning in this book to be interesting.  Thinking of death by stoning in the United States reminds me of one thing: the witch frenzy in Salem.  Some of the people who were thought to be witches during the Salem Witch Trials were stoned to death.  Because of these two reasons, the theme of stoning can also be related to the them of the concepts of magic and superstition and their place in society.  Perhaps the characters in "The Lottery" keep on with the stoning ritual because of the magic and superstition that comes with it.  It is implied in the story that the farmers have good crops every year, so maybe the stoning continues because the characters relate it to their good crops.