The Real Purpose of “The Lottery” Imagine living in a wonderful small town. Everyone knows each other. Although there are occasional disagreements and gossip, most of the time everyone gets along. Naturally, everyone in the town truly comes to love each other as if they were all one big family. Every year, however, all residents are forced to kill a member of the town. How terrible and shocking! This is essentially what happens in the short story called “The Lottery”. There is a lottery to stone one person every year, and this year the victim is Tessie Hutchinson. In "The Lottery", the author, Shirley Jackson, implies that humans are capable of terrible cruelty and of destroying themselves at any time and in any place if they believe it is acceptable or that it is the right thing to do. First, Jackson uses the elements of the story to show that humans are capable of brutality anywhere if they don't seem to see a problem with it. One of the elements of the story is the setting, and the setting of this story is a "sunny, pleasant...and happy" place, but terrible events still took place (The Lottery 144). This shows that bad things can happen anywhere, even in places where everything seems “civilized and peaceful” (The Lottery 144). Additionally, there are no clues in the story describing “a specific time and place” (The Lottery 144). By doing this, the author was trying to suggest that terrible events can happen at any time or anywhere in the world (The Lottery 144). Another element of the story are the characters. The author uses many characters to prove that if people think it's the right thing to do, they are literally capable of destroying themselves. Many people in the town who seemed to be good friends of Tessie are the ones who...... middle of paper ......tery 145). Finally, during the Cold War, there was also a “communist ‘witch hunt’ that lasted… four years,” during which many people were injured and killed (The Lottery 146). All of this shows that the human race can actually kill other people if they think it's okay to do so. Overall, the author of the short story “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson, uses the story to infer that humans can commit terribly harmful acts. to the point of destroying themselves at some point or place if they are made to believe that it is truly the right thing to do. Jackson uses story elements, such as setting, characters, and plot, to do this. She is also fundamentally critical of the human race as a whole, and ultimately she is able to write history with the events of World War II in mind. Humans can truly do horribly amazing things when given the opportunity to do them..