Lottery is a form of gambling in which numbers are drawn to determine a winner. Prizes can range from cash to goods and services. The game is a popular past time and has become an integral part of many societies. Some governments endorse and regulate it, while others outlaw it. There are several types of lottery, ranging from scratch-off tickets to multi-state games with huge jackpots. The odds of winning a lottery are very low, but the game is popular with many people.
There are some people who have a special skill for picking lottery numbers. They may use all sorts of arcane, mystical, random, thoughtful and thoughtless, birthday or favourite number, pattern based methods to select their lucky numbers. However, most of the times they end up as losers because the chances of winning the lottery are very less.
In this short story Jackson depicts the evil-nature of humankind by describing how a small village practice of lottery makes one woman a victim to be stoned to death. The villagers are oblivious to this and carry on with their ceremonies. The whole scenario presents the hypocrisy of people and the fact that they are unable to see anything wrong in their own acts. The act of lottery is like a get-out-of-jail card for these villagers and they do not think twice before picking the piece of paper that will determine their fate. This shows how people are prone to indulge in anything that will help them get out of trouble.