Shirley Jackson
In this obvious screenplay for a Twilight Zone episode, the futility and savagery of blindly clinging to tradition are presented in a rather objective tone. However, this objective tone contributes to the verbal and situational ironies that provide the shock value which swings opinion against the traditions mentioned in the story.
Although not set in stone, the word "lottery" frequently refers to potential payoffs in the millions of dollars. From the very beginning of the story, the reader would likely anticipate a payoff of crops or perhaps money due to the rural setting and excited atmosphere. That reader would be dead wrong.
It turns out that the author decided to manipulate the common expectation of fortune from chance to point out the more common outcome of tragedy by chance often aided by human action. Although a lottery like this purely relies on impartial probability, human nature created the lottery in the first place: "'Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns.'" (Jackson, 268).
The most significant situational irony featured in the story is that nearly every aspect of the lottery was eliminated except the sacrifice. Even though the villagers appeared to be so concerned with maintaining tradition, things like chants, containers, and protocol have been forgotten. This irony reveals the human nature central to the theme of the story: humans will select scapegoats (Mrs. Hutchinson in this case) for everything from economic hardship to rain patterns.
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