Too Much Control

Author’s Note: This is a piece about the main idea/theme of the short story “The Lottery”. In this piece I explain what the main idea is and provide examples from the story.

            The lottery is not what you might think it is. In the short story “The Lottery”, it’s completely different. Comparing to winning a million dollars, well let’s just say if you win the lottery, you’re doomed.  See, in the lottery a person from the village is chosen to die under unknown circumstances. Why does the government do this, you may ask? Well your answer is the theme of this tragic story. It’s power.  

            There are a lot of reasons why the theme of this short story is power. To start off with, the government in this story is very controlling. Every year someone is chosen to die: for example, in the story, Tessie. She got picked to die, and she did, by getting stones threw at her until she was dead. Her last words were “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right”. And she is correct. It isn’t right to just kill someone for the fun of it. This is how the government is very controlling.

            Another reason the theme is power is because of the men in this story. The men control the women ridiculously. In the short story, it seemed like the woman would not do anything without the men’s permission. How absurd! Women should have been able to do anything and should have not been controlled so much. An example of men overpowering the girls is “ A tall boy in the crowd raised his hand. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’m drawing for my mother and m.’” This shows that when the villagers were picking for the lottery, women weren’t allowed to pick. They weren’t allowed to do anything.

            As you can see, there are many reasons why the theme is power/controlling in the short story, “The Lottery.” The controlling government backs up this statement; so does the examples and details from the story about the men being overruling. In my opinion, women should have been treated equally and the government shouldn’t have been so controlling. That was horrible