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“Shut up, Tessie,” Bill Hutchinson said.
After Bill Hutchinson draws the marked slip of paper, Tessie begins protesting that his selection wasn’t fair, and Bill, in response, tells her to be quiet. Bill should be as distraught as Tessie, as he knows he or a member of his family will be killed. However, he seems embarrassed by Tessie’s reaction and more concerned with his family’s compliance than their actual well-being.
“I guess not, Joe,” Bill Hutchinson said regretfully. “My daughter draws with her husband’s family, that’s only fair.”
Bill agrees with Mr. Summers’s reminder to Tessie that their daughter cannot draw with their family. Bill follows rules better than Tessie, as shown by his choice of words that the process as outlined and understood by all is “only fair.” While Tessie expresses just the opposite in a more rebellious attitude toward the process now that it affects her family, Bill sees the rules of the lottery as sacrosanct.
Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal-company office. Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd.
After the members of the Hutchinson family draw their slips of paper, everyone shows theirs to Mr. Summers except for Tessie. Bill forces the paper out of her hand and shows it to the entire crowd. Bill’s readiness to expose his wife as their victim shows how little he must truly care for her as well as his devotion to following the rules of the lottery.
