Review the theme:

Sometimes traditions continue long after they've outlived their usefulness.

Which detail from "The Lottery" best contributes to this theme?

The children gather stones before the adults assemble for the lottery.

The shabby and faded black box

Tessie tries to get her adult married daughter included in the drawing, so as to protect herself.

Bill tells Tessie to shut up when she complains about the lottery.

Im pretty sure it's the "shabby and faded black box option" because that's what I chose when I had this test. The box being faded insinuates the idea that it's been used for a long time.

In "The Lottery", by Shirley Jackson, the detail from the text that best contributes to the theme: Sometimes traditions continue long after they've outlived their usefulness, is The shabby and faded black box. In this text, we learn how dangerous it is to accept traditions blindly. In this town, the annual lottery ends up with a ritual murder. They feel incapable to change it. As it happens in the story with the black box. It was made with pieces of the first black box, and every year they want to replace it by a new one but they never succeed in doing that. So, both the lottery and the black box are traditions that continue long after they've outlived their usefulness.