The Lottery of Shirley Jackson
... from the Biblical perspective. First of all, we can find in the Scriptures several passages where the stoning is mentioned. For example, in Deuteronomy 22:23-24 we read, “23 If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death-the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you.” Another example is mentioned in Acts 7:57-58, when Stephen was put to death: "And casting him forth without the city, they stoned him." After recognizing that the stoning has a biblical association, the question that surge is, Does the same reasons for stoning during the Biblical era apply for this situation in The Lottery? In order to know the answer to that question we have to examine what was the stoning prescribed for. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “Stone throwing might be merely a mark of hatred and contempt, or the means of carrying out murderous intentions against which provision had to be made in the Law. […] Death by stoning is prescribed in the Pentateuch as the penalty for eighteen different crimes including Sabbath-breaking, but for one crime only -- murder -- is it the penalty prescribed in all the codes.” After analyzing The Lottery we can see that Tessie Hutchinson didn’t commit, neither a crime nor a violation to a law to be stoned to death. Therefore, the biblical reasons for someone to be stoned to death don’t apply to Tessie’s stoning. Tessie’s stoning just was part of a ritual in this village. On the other hand, we can notice several parallelisms in the way the stoning was done. Lets examine one of them. The Law given to the Israelites stated who should participate in the stoning. For example, the Law stated in Leviticus 20:2, "Say to the Israelites: 'Any Israelite or any alien living in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech must be put to death. The people of the community are to stone him.” Clearly, we find there a resemblance between the stoning during the Biblical era and the fact that the villagers were those who stoned Tessie to death. On the other hand, we find also a variation on the procedure. In The Lottery the stoning was effectuated at the village square. What about in Biblical times? Normally, the stoning was done out of the city. Numbers 15:35-36 reads, “ 35 Then the LORD said to Moses, "The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp." 36 So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.” Nowadays, is the stoning still a trad...