What is a Lottery?

A lottery is a gambling game in which people buy tickets with numbers on them, and winners are chosen by chance. Lotteries are also used for distributing property or money and for choosing juries. Modern lotteries are sometimes called raffles, although the strict definition of a lottery is a game in which a consideration (money or something else valuable) must be paid for a chance to win.

Lotteries are extremely popular, with 50 percent of Americans buying a ticket each year. But they aren’t the equalizer of wealth that supporters claim, and there is no way to say that everybody has a good shot at winning. Research shows that lottery players are disproportionately lower-income, less educated, and nonwhite. In addition, the amount of money they spend on tickets is a much smaller percentage of their income than is the state’s share of the proceeds.

It’s no accident that Jackson gave Tessie Hutchinson a name that echoes Anne Hutchinson, the American religious dissenter who was banished from Massachusetts because of her Antinomian beliefs. Jackson is suggesting that there is a spiritual rebellion lurking within the women of this imagined village, and that it is up to the men to bring it out.