The idea of having a scapegoat provides the village with a tradition that allows them an outlet for placing blame upon someone and for enacting violence without guilt.

The concept of the scapegoat is an ancient one. In the Old Testament of the Bible (Leviticus: 16), a scapegoat was an actual goat that was sent into the wilderness carrying the sins of the people symbolically laid upon it by the Jewish chief priest. Another goat was sacrificed as a sin offering. Similarly, in Jackson's "The Lottery," a scapegoat is found on which to blame the ills of the community—originally, it seems, so that crops would grow and be plentiful.

The scapegoat, a person who is punished for the sins of others, plays a thematic role in the development of the story. Tessie Hutchison becomes the sacrificial victim in the lottery. Ironically, she contributes to her own fate when she insists that the lottery was not conducted fairly when her own husband holds the "winning" ticket. By offering her own daughter and husband to be included in the lottery to increase the odds that her husband will not again pick the marked ticket, Tessie is offering up another scapegoat. In the end, she is the one stoned for the sins of the village. Some critics view Jackson's selection of a female victim in the story as an indictment of patriarchial society in which women are often the scapegoats.