Since the beginning of time man has had the internal drive to congregate and form relationships with others. From these relationships societies have evolved, and from the evolution characteristics of humankind have been brought forward. Certain characteristics have been cultivated as acceptable, while others are labeled as unacceptable. Learned evil has become present as a means of survival in every society. Humanity’s learned evil is represented by society’s relationships formed with one another by a common set of goals. As in the case of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, the community inherits the evil of the yearly lottery. The villagers, however, are only afraid of the unknown; to thiem, evil is whatever would happen if the lottery was not successfully carried out.
             Year after year after year for as long as the villagers can remember, there has been an annual lottery, which comes from “One of the ancient practices that modern man deplores as inhumanely evil is the annual sacrifice of a scapegoat…for the benefit of the community (Friedman 63).” The “benefit” behind the lottery seems to be a ritualistic cleansing of the village from its sins. The villager chosen at random in the drawing inherits from the community all of the evils of the past year, and then is stoned to death. Although to others this practice seems barbaric, to them it is a necessary practice which must be continued from year to year. What the villagers fail to recognize is that by seeming to wash away their sins by the stoning, they are in fact doing nothing but creating sins for themselves. A. R. Coulthard states that “it [the lottery] is a grim…parable of the evil inherent in human nature (226).” However, humans do not act this way unless they are prompted by an outside source, and as children the villagers were taught that this is the way life worked. They accepted it first ...