The Relation Between Human Sacrifice and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson - Essay for uas prose PDF

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This essay reviews about the relation between human sacrifice in real life and the story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson...

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Haura Nabila Rinaldi NPM: 180410150051 / D

The Relation Between Human Sacrifice and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson In all parts of the world, we have different cultures around the world. This diversity between one culture to another makes it have a lot of different tradition. Each tradition has their own rituals that the worshiper must obey to please their Gods, spirits, or follow their ancestors. There are many types of rituals around the world such as marriage rituals, festivals that held for a day, funeral rituals, and many more. The most familiar rituals are sacrifices. Sacrifice is offering wether some foods, object or living things such as animals or humans to their Gods, spirit or ancestors as their own believes to get something that they wished for. A human sacrifice was already been practiced since long time ago and sometimes it is still practiced as a part of religious ritual today. They sacrifice an adult human or an infant in reason to please their Gods, ancestors, or spirits. Furthermore, in some cases the person who is willingly to be sacrifice sometimes had to do some rituals that they have before the victim had to be killed. Historians also found some evidence that brings us to the fact that human sacrifice actually has already practiced since the Mayans and Incas. Archeologist also found numerous of evidence that such as bones, small temples, and knives or any other sharp objects to end the victim’s life for the rituals. Some other place that has been used to burry or drowned the victims also had been found by the archeologist. Today,

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some of the places that are believed to be sacred for human sacrifice rituals are mostly become one of the most favorite destinations for tourists. In fiction, human sacrifices are commonly use as the main topic of the story. One of the literatures that use this type of topic is “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. This short story tells about the traditional rituals that held in the small town which has their own annual ritual known as “The Lottery” by the summer for the purpose of good harvest in the current year. On the occasion of the ritual, they make a drawing game in the square town lead by the officials and the elder in the town. The lottery itself, uses a black wooden box that is already been used traditionally in the ritual and it contains a lot of small folded paper which is one of them had been marked with a black spot. In the end, the person who gets the marked paper will be slaughtered by the townspeople by throwing rocks at the victim until the victim dies. This story that was written by Shirley Jackson gets a lot of attention from the readers also emerge some contradiction after it was published on The New Yorkers magazine on 1948. Based on newyorkers.com, the writer got lots of mail from readers of the magazine that drew up their rage. Some of them were kind, but only from her close friends. Not only rage mails, she also got mails that claim the readers were rather confused of the story. The rage mails were also claims that they want to know where such an awful lotteries were held and they would go and watch. Moreover, they also threaten that they would cancel the subscription of The New Yorkers, and also declared that the story was some piece of garbage.

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The reason of this embarkation is the fact that the story is consist of brutal annual event of sacrifice rituals that the townspeople believe. One of the reason they held these continuous sacrifice that has been carried out for many years is that they automatically response that it is a good sign for the town’s good. The eldest himself, the Old Man Warner, gives us a hint. He said that: “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough about them. Next thing you know, they will be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work anymore, live that way for a while. Used to be saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon’. first thing you know we would all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There always be a lottery”(line 129-132). This explains that this southern part of the town has a strong believe about the annual ritual and explains how the tradition was started since many years ago. He also said that if they disobey the tradition, they would be starving and starts consume stewed chickweed (some kind of wild plants, common garden weed with small white flowers) and acorns (the typically ovoid nut of an oak, enclosed at the base by a cupule, mostly brown coloured). Another reason that they would never put an end on the ritual is that they have a fearful feeling of disobeying the culture that they had been held for many years. On the other hand, the townspeople still questioned of their sacred rituals by the reason of different opinions. Some still carry out the tradition while the others were not considering they will kill brutally the next victim of the “winner” of the lottery, such as in the northern part of the town. Eventually, it began to lose some important value of the tradition. The explanation of the black wooden box itself, symbolize that they deliberately pay less attention to the tradition that supposed to be. The black box, related to the

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story, had been lost long ago and every year after the lottery Mr. Summers, the official of the lottery, always asks about the new box replacing the old ones. Instead people concerns about the new box, “the subject gradually fades off without anything had been done” (line 39). The fact that they didn’t pay any attention to the tradition also pictured in some of the rituals that had been forgotten such as the item for the townsfolk to take their lottery, the recital or some sort that used to be performed by the official of the lottery, and a ritual salute. Firstly, the item when they approached the box used to be a chip which was made from wood and had been used for many generations. It was alternated to slips of paper because when they use the wooden chips, the population in the town was enlarging to more than three hundred and it is going to keep on growing. The fact was the black box wasn’t quite big enough to fit the three hundred wooden chips; they substituted it to pieces of paper that could make it easier when the population of the townsfolk increases. Secondly, the recital used to be sung by the official before they start the lottery. A difference of the ways to sing the recital was the reason they had forgotten it. Some townsfolk believe that the official who sang it supposed to walk among the people but others said the officials didn’t necessary had to do it instead they just stand in front of the townsfolk. Last, the rituals salute. It has been said that the officials of the lottery had to address each person who came up to take the paper out of the box. Due to change with time, it was felt necessary only for the official to speak to each person who came up. However, not all the rituals of the lottery seem to be forgotten. For instance, the ways to secure of the black box itself has never been changed since years ago. The procedure every year was same since it has been told to. According to the story,

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firstly after the officials fill slips of papers inside the box, it then taken to Mr. Summers coal company and locked up until he was ready to take it to the square town next morning. On the next morning, the box will be used for the lottery. Afterwards, the box was put away from one place or one’s house to another every year. This conclude that even though they had drop most of the ways to do the rituals, some of them are still been doing up till the current year but still it already lose some of the values of these tradition. Based on this short story, we can conclude that the major problems in this story are the traditional rituals that they hold from their ancestors. The traditions itself rather quite unacceptable in these days by the cause of a group of people murdered others brutally and sacrifice them upon some reason that they believe. Even so, in reality these sacrifice rituals are still happen especially when they still have a strong believe in their tradition. People who still believe in this ancient tradition are most likely from developed countries such as India, Nepal, Africa, and so on. They use all different ways to sacrifice the victim, and not just by making a lottery similar as the short story by Shirley Jackson. For example in India on October 2012, there was a 7 year old girl who is sacrificed to ensure a better harvest, just as likely as “The Lottery”. The news said that: “Lalita Tati disappeared in October and her dismembered remains were found a week later, Rajendra Narayan Das, a senior police officer in the Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh state, told The Associated Press. Tati was walking home after watching television at a neighbor's house when she was kidnapped, Das said. The two men confessed to cutting her open and removing her liver as an offering. Police arrested two men, both poor farmers, last week and they told police they

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killed the girl to appease their gods and get a better harvest, Das said.” (Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-indian-child-killed-as-human-sacrifice/) In India, human sacrifices are rare, but because of this occasion, it gets major attention from the government. Another example of these kinds of rituals is on Nepal. A man brutally murdered an unknown 10 year old boy by the reason of curing his son’s illness. The news reported that: “Police superintendent Nal Prasad Upadhyaya, who headed the investigation, told CNN on Monday that Kodai Harijan admitted committing the gruesome crime with his relatives after consulting the priest. According to testimony given to police, Harijan and his relatives found the child playing with friends in the village and lured him away by giving him a pack of biscuits and promising him 50 rupees (49 cents). The boy was taken to a temple on the outskirts of the village, where they performed a religious ritual. He was then taken to a field nearby, where three people held him down as another slit his throat. When police found him, the boy's head was almost severed from his body.” (Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/27/asia/nepal-human-sacrifice/) These days, Human sacrifices sometimes regarded as a normal practice by uncivilized societies or some kind of group of people still have the traditional mindset. It is also considered to be unacceptable, immoral, and bizarre in this 21st century because human sacrifice is basically as the same level as murderer and there is no other excuse other than that. It also serves no purpose in the end and nobody is actually willingly to be sacrificed. Besides, they are not only put an end to their life, they also kills their hopes, dreams and took away their own rights to

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life and the world in peace. There are numerous of laws that also banned these kinds of rituals by saying that every person in the world has their own rights to live free from any danger. Human sacrifices are only rituals that exist in the past and since it has got banned citizens were protected by the laws of human rights that ban all kinds of killing each other. They are live in fear from the fact that they know they would be the next victim or watching members of their family got brutally murdered with no clear reason. Despite the fact that this ritual is already banned in all parts of the country, some uneducated civilization in some parts of the world still practice these kinds of terms illegally or underground, alike both of the news before. Most of the uneducated people still believe in superstition and their ancestor that is actually contradicted with reality that is actually has no connection between both of them. Another reason that human sacrifice is still practiced is also happen to people that have lack of religion basics that also prevent the act of killing other individual. Religions mostly disallow human sacrifices, but some of them approved the action of animal sacrifices instead. In the end, the society still approves this kinds of rituals are harming other people and it has to be ended.

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Sources: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/27/asia/nepal-human-sacrifice/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-indian-child-killed-as-human-sacrifice/ http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-lottery-letters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice...