Student Question
Why is youth participation important in the lottery?
Quick answer:
Youth participation in "The Lottery" is crucial for indoctrination, as children are impressionable and easily influenced. The village ensures that children, with few preconceived notions of morality, are involved early on, facilitating acceptance of the lottery's brutality. This is evident when children gather first and even participate in the stoning, highlighting the community's success in normalizing the ritual, as shown by little Davy Hutchinson receiving pebbles to stone his own mother.
Via Merriam-Webster:
Indoctrinate: to teach (someone) to fully accept the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group and to not consider other ideas, opinions, and beliefs
The easiest way to indoctrinate someone is to start with a fresh slate. For humanity, there is no fresher slate than a child who, naturally, has very few preconceived notions of right or wrong, moral or immoral. The village in the story uses this to their advantage, even going so far as to state that "The children assembled first, of course." At the end of the story after Tessie Hutchinson is selected by the lottery, the narrator again points out the participation of the children by saying, "The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles." The village has so successfully explained away the lottery that even the winner's (or perhaps the loser's from an outside view) children participate without protest.
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