Shirley
Jackson’s The Lottery is a story about a village’s annual lottery tradition. It’s
one of the days the villagers anticipate.
All the villagers’ names will be entered into the lottery. It’s a
lottery so what will the prize be? The lucky winner will be stoned to death by
all the villagers.
Tessie
Hutchinson, the unlucky winner of the lottery, questioned the tradition and why
does the village upholds such tradition. All the villagers didn’t took her seriously,
some of them got angry about her petition because the lottery has been there for around 70 years and no one dared to change nor question the custom.
Freedom
is usually just an imaginary word. It’s
just a dream deferred. People are as free as what the society allows them to
be. At the end of the day, you have to follow its norms and customs.
Why
should it matter? This is the society that makes educational attainment and
grades the measurements for a person’s value. This is the society that ‘fights’
for global warming but never stopped purchasing cars. This is the same society
that blurs the line between rebellion and fighting for your right. And this is
the society that says ‘Go reach your dreams’ but tells you what profession to
take.
The
preconceived notion of freedom is just as binding as the other laws. People
cling to their government to protect their freedom but the government
themselves converts our freedom into a sample research data.
We
are just free in mind but not in reality. We are letting ourselves believe that
we are free but we’re not. It’s a never ending cycle. In every insurgence, the
government uses freedom as a smoke screen to prevent anarchy.
From Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, Juan
Crisostomo Ibarra said, “I have observed that the prosperity or misery of each
people is in direct proportion to its liberties or its prejudices and,
accordingly, to the sacrifices or the selfishness of its forefathers.”
