A lottery is a form of gambling that involves drawing numbers for prizes, such as money or goods. People are usually required to purchase tickets in order to participate. In the US, state governments regulate lotteries and collect tax revenue from them. The first recorded lotteries took place in the Low Countries in the 15th century, when towns sold tickets to raise funds for town fortifications and to help the poor. Initially, the prize amounts were relatively small. Today, the value of a lottery prize is often much larger.
The story The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, illustrates that one must not be afraid to stand up against authority if it is wrong. Tessie Hutchinson, the character in this story, is a woman who moved to a small village in Vermont and was not accepted by its residents. She was told to play in the lottery, and she did. The outcome was not favorable to her, but she did not protest the lottery until it turned against her and her family.
Another theme that Jackson uses in her story is family. She shows that people do not care about their families when they are blindly following an outdated tradition. She also stresses that even in a small, peaceful place like this, evil can happen to anyone.
People often overestimate their chances of winning the lottery. Van Boven explains that this is due to psychological motivations. These include counterfactual thinking, where people imagine what could have happened if they had made different decisions, and overweighting low probabilities.