The Lottery is a story about a small town in Vermont where tradition has been so entrenched that people cannot reason with it. Shirley Jackson uses this tale to show how people can be so blinded by tradition that they cannot see when it is not serving them well. The story also shows that people can be hurt by following tradition when the purpose behind it has been lost or forgotten.
The word lottery means “sale of lots,” and modern lotteries are essentially gambling games in which players pay money for a chance to win a prize. Historically, prizes have included items of value, such as goods, land, or services. Some lotteries are conducted for public benefit, such as a raffle to raise funds for the construction of a church. Others are purely commercial in nature, such as the sale of units in a subsidized housing complex or kindergarten placements in a good school.
When a person wins the lottery, they are usually awarded a sum of cash or goods, but there is a strong perception that skill plays a role in the outcome. This is a type of cognitive bias known as the illusion of control. For example, anyone who has played the lottery and felt like they were just a number away from winning, or that they had to choose the right numbers to have a good chance of winning, has experienced this tendency to overestimate the amount of influence they can exert over events that are ultimately decided by random chance.