Harmful Traditions in Two Kinds, The Lottery, and Girl

Introduction: When Traditions Become Harmful

Tradition is normally discussed in connection with culture, and to keep a culture healthy and alive, it is important to allow positive traditions to endure. However, traditions that place restrictions on personal, professional, emotional, or spiritual growth tend to have a negative impact on all of humankind and must therefore not be followed. When traditions are not followed, they die a natural death. Bad traditions must not be kept alive — whether through personal struggle or collective rebellion.

Not all traditions help sustain a culture; some lend a bad reputation to a culture and cause only its degeneration. The three works examined here — Amy Tan's "Two Kinds," Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery", and Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" — each illustrate why certain traditions are negative and must be allowed to die.

Self-Assertion and Parental Control in Amy Tan's 'Two Kinds'

"Two Kinds" is one of the most heart-wrenching stories about a girl's difficult relationship with her mother. The sheer transparency of emotions can leave readers in awe as poor Ni Kan suffers from her mother's unreasonable demands. She wants to be a child; she does not want to be a "genius," and so she chooses to rebel against an excessively overbearing mother. Despite all her mother's desires, it is Ni Kan who is right in her desire not to be blindly obedient, because through personal struggle she is working to end a bad tradition. Every person has the right to live according to their own wishes and dreams rather than following someone else's instructions at every turn. By asserting herself, Ni Kan saves herself from the misery that had been ruining her childhood and could have destroyed her adolescence as well. Amy Tan makes clear that self-assertion is a valuable trait when practiced against tyrannical influences and traditions.

One serious problem with certain parenting traditions is that children are forced to listen to their parents without question. Obeying parents at the cost of one's own happiness must never be the guiding principle of child-rearing, as it completely destroys a child's personality and may make them more disruptive as they seek to assert themselves. Children raised this way can also begin to believe that their parents do not accept them as they are — as Ni Kan says in the story, "Why don't you like me the way I am. I am not a genius" (p. 261). Instead, children should be encouraged to pay attention to their parents' guidance and then use their own minds to make decisions for themselves. Unfortunately for Ni Kan, her mother could not understand her daughter's desire for self-determination.

By giving children a chance to make their own decisions, parents teach them responsibility and help them grow into rational, confident individuals. Parents must act like maps: they provide basic guidelines about the terrain, but they do not need to force a child onto one particular road toward a destination of their choosing. Instead, they should show children all the possible ways to explore their talents and then let the child choose both the direction and the destination. This is the kind of tradition that needs to be cultivated in all cultures, and Ni Kan was a rebel who understood that she did not have to follow her mother's dictates because she had every right to carve her own destiny.

Blind Conformity and Ritualized Evil in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'

Another example of a destructive tradition appears in "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, which shows what happens when people stop raising objections to blatant acts of injustice. The story may initially seem to lack any clear purpose. The people of a small town gather to celebrate an annual event called "the lottery," greeting each other cordially as if it were a normal — perhaps even festive — occasion. The reader naturally expects the winner to receive a prize, as in an ordinary lottery, but only at the end does the story reveal the pernicious intent of the ritual. The story is rich in symbolism: the black box, for instance, represents the darkness and evil nature of a cruel tradition.

In this annual event, the "winner" is stoned to death by friends and family for no particular reason. Upon closer examination, the story reads as a commentary on what happens when people blindly follow tradition. While the specific tradition targeted remains somewhat ambiguous, the story is clearly a critique of how the totalitarian nature of certain customs results in the serious oppression of some members of society. The villagers represent society at large, and the Hutchinson family represents those sections of society that ultimately become the target. To protect themselves, the villagers had agreed to go along with the ritual year after year, and as long as it was not their own family chosen, they were willing to continue. Rather than standing against the tradition, they reluctantly — or nonchalantly — accepted it, so long as it was someone else who suffered.

The fuss over the black box illustrates how deeply attached people had become to this symbol of an old, cruel custom: "Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box" (p. 305). This is a story of the evil that resides within human beings, but indirectly it also attacks humanity's complacency and inability to fight for what is right. By avoiding the difficult path of resistance, people ultimately do themselves more harm than good. A person does not realize that one day they will become the target of their own inaction — and so they continue to follow the dictatorial directives of culture, taking no stand until they themselves become victims.

Conclusion: Discarding Traditions That No Longer Serve Us

While traditions are important, not all of them are worth preserving. The stories of Ni Kan, the villagers in "The Lottery," and the silenced daughter in "Girl" each demonstrate in their own way that traditions which restrict growth, enforce blind conformity, or oppress individuals cause more harm than good. Some traditions need to die altogether, while others may be retained in part — but only insofar as they genuinely serve human flourishing rather than suppress it.

Works Cited

Kincaid, Jamaica. "Girl." The Harper Anthology of Fiction. Ed. Sylvan Barnet. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1991. p. 1190.

Discovering Fiction Student's Book 2. Cambridge University Press, 2001.