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"The Lottery," Its Social Order and Male Superiority Issue As much as we would like to believe that men and women are viewed as equals in our society, often times we are disappointed. As is the case in Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery." "The Lottery" describes a town's people who gathered on an ordinary summer day to perform a sacrificial ceremony dubbed the lottery. It is a ceremony held by the richest male in …

…her husband "forces the slip of paper out of her hand" regaining his dominance over his unruly wife and all together transforms her into a symbol of the perils of the defiant. Thus in stoning Mrs. Hutchinson to death, the lottery functions successfully to purge the village of any sense of noncompliance to its male governing hierarchical order making Tessie Hutchinson an unwitting sacrifice to serve the purpose of safeguarding the positions of capitalist patriarchs.