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The Theme of Groupthink in “The Sisterhood of the Night” and “The Lottery”

In “The Sisterhood of the Night” by Steven Millhauser and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, groupthink is a central theme that authors used to explain their main idea. Groupthink is a phenomenon in psychology occurring to individuals where their desire for conformity within their group results in a deviant outcome. This means that the members consider minimizing their conflict while trying to reach a consensus decision without evaluating the alternatives critically. “The Sisterhood of the Night” and “The Lottery” presents this concept in details with relevant examples trying to depict the use of the theme.

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a fiction story explaining the idea of the modern community in arbitrarily stoning one of their own for the purpose of satisfying a ritual. Their idea, in real situation, is unbelievable. From the setting, “The Lottery” is in unidentified American town having some annual tradition. Every year, residents of the town play a lottery that happens in the main square. The residents of the place have no memory of the exact procedure followed or the origin of the process (The Dangers in Human Group Animal Instinct). Likewise, they do not bother replacing the decaying black box used for many years containing the lottery tickets. They are too lazy to enquire on the situation but rather complain of how fast this day reaches every year and disrupt their daily routine. This depicts the idea of groupthink. People often work together to get the lottery but end up blaming the outcome of the activity. In explaining this theme, the author sets the process of the lottery into two steps: in the first step, the head of the family picks out some piece of paper and gives it to the family