The Crucible and The Lottery Analytical Essay Essay

The Crucible and The Lottery Analytical Essay

Traditions are part of our civilization. It is our culture, our daily lives. It helped us of who we are now, whether it is for good or bad. It makes us special, different from the other people in some ways. But when the tradition is abused, used to harm other people, and blindly following it knowing that it is not right, it can lead to complicated problems.

The book the crucible and the article The Lottery by Arthur Miller and Shirley Jackson respectively, both portrays how abusing the tradition can lead to disaster. Just like in the crucible, their problem started with a bunch of girls dancing in the forest late at night, and then some man saw them dancing like they are doing some kind of witchcraft. It began the snowball effect, all the lies, the sins, all of the hidden truths later on revealed in the story. A lot of the characters have died, some suffered brutal death like the woman who died getting crushed. Its their tradition to believe in god. They dont believe in any kind of magic, alchemy, sorcery, and witchcraft. But when they knew someone was doing witchcraft, they had to know whether it is true or not, that leads to deaths of many people. The same thing happened to the lottery. Each year, a random person in the village must die to be a sacrifice for their good harvest in that year.

It is their tradition to offer a living human being as a sacrifice. Both the lottery and the Crucible abuse their traditions.

The elaborate ritual of the lottery is designed so that all villagers have the same chance of becoming the victim, even children are at risk. Each year, someone new is chosen and killed, and no family is safe. Like in the Crucible the villagers focused on maintaining public reputation, the townsfolk of Salem must fear that the sins of their friends and associates will taint their names. Many kept blaming each other so it was almost like they were choose at random because everyone kept getting blamed.

In The Lottery villagers turn against the victim much like many turned on those accused of being a witch. The instant that Tessie Hutchinson chooses the marked slip of paper, she loses her identity as a popular housewife. Her friends and family participate in the killing with as much enthusiasm as everyone else. Tessie essentially becomes invisible to them in the fervor of persecution. Although she has done nothing wrong, her innocence doesnt matter. She has drawn the marked paper, she has herself become marked and according to the logic of the lottery, she therefore must die.

Tessies death is an extreme example of how societies can persecute innocent people for absurd reasons. Those who are persecuted become marked because of a trait or characteristic that is out of their control like in the Crucible they cannot control who was blaming them. Just as the villagers in the lottery blindly follow tradition and kill Tessie because that is what they are expected to do, people in real life often persecute others without questioning why. As Jackson

suggests, any such persecution is essentially random, which is why Tessies bizarre death is so universal.

There are a lot of differences about the crucible and the lottery. The characters of the crucible were brought into trial to see whether they were guilty or not, not like the lottery the fate of the person relies on their luck. Even if they didnt like what is happening on them, they just cant do anything at all.

Sometimes doing our tradition hurts people. It is not always right, that we should follow it. We have to think about it and see whether we are hurting someone or destroying something. That is why we have given the mind to think and a heart to feel.