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#2 The Lottery (Shirley Jackson, 1948)

 Rating: 9/10

    Whether the utilitarianism ultimately leads to utopian society has been the grand question ever since people grouped together and divided roles for the presence of coherent community. People in this village full of blossoming flowers blindly trusted that annual tradition of brutally murdering a chosen person would promise bountiful cornfield. The incident happened to Tessie Hutchinson, the only person who dared to defy the long kept tradition, shows unpleasant instinct of human nature.

    Crowds were aware of the unfairness of the tradition as an anonymous girl hoped Nancy were not the one to be selected. However, as soon as Tessie picked the paper with a mark, people turned against Tessie as if they bleached out the identity of her from their memory. Indifference towards the underprivileged, turning away from the loved ones for sake of their own lives show the danger of reckless submission to tradition. There still are lots of illogical custom around the world that should be amended and we should now initiate actions rather than stopping at perceptions of such problems. 

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