“The Lottery” is a short story written by Shirley Jackson that depicts a small village and its citizens as they perform a ritualistic ceremony of human sacrifice once a year to ensure an abundant yield of crops. During the ceremony, Mr. summers; one of the village leaders takes his position on a platform, and places a vestige of a black box is placed on a three-legged stool. Inside is a majority of small unmarked strips of paper. However, one has a tiny black dot marked in the center. The unlucky recipient of the winning lottery ticket is then brutally sacrificed for the better of the Village. A film adaptation of the story has been made with a number of differences and similarities in things such as theme, setting and characters. When comparing and contrasting “The Lottery” in the short story and film version’s setting is a major factor. The film opens with a young man named Jason Smith leading a seemingly ordinary life in Boston working as a tow truck operator and spending time with his girlfriend, far from events of the short story. When Jason's father falls ill, he explains to Jason, he would like his ashes spread next to Jason's mothers grave in the town of New Hope. …show more content…
The story and film tell of an annual tradition performed by the villagers of a small town, the tradition is thought to be a necessity for the villagers, but for different reasons. In the film adaptation, it seems as though the motif for the annual sacrifice is religious. The Short story version explains the apparent reasoning behind the ritual murders is a sacrifice to ensure an abundant crop. However, there are hints in both version of the story that the villagers have seemed to forget exactly why the tradition is still carried out, but they continue because it has become a custom for its people. “the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box. They still remembered to use