I think there are a few things that make it "worthy" of literary consideration:
1. Read a straight horror story, it's quite a surprising twist at the end
2. A critique on the senselessness of following tradition just for the sake of it -- the way a society can just go along with something without really understanding why
3. The banality of evil, and how it can often look like something totally ordinary, rather than some nefarious demon
I loved it when I first read it -- it truly shocked it in middle school and I still have a visceral feeling when thinking about it many years later
1. Read a straight horror story, it's quite a surprising twist at the end
2. A critique on the senselessness of following tradition just for the sake of it -- the way a society can just go along with something without really understanding why
3. The banality of evil, and how it can often look like something totally ordinary, rather than some nefarious demon
I loved it when I first read it -- it truly shocked it in middle school and I still have a visceral feeling when thinking about it many years later