Essay

Due the 18

Shirley Jackson, THE LOTTERY, page 244

Shirley Jackson’s famous story shocks us, even as it shocked so many readers of the New Yorker after her story first appeared in June 1948. Perhaps one of the most wellknown short stories of the twentieth century, partly because it is so frequently taught in the classroom, the horror of “The Lottery” comes, in part, through its objective narrator and apathetic characters. Set in an unnamed New England town, “The Lottery” focuses on an annual tradition so engrained in the community that no one remembers when it began or why it continues. By transferring a primitive ritual to a modern American small town and by making clear in passing that the same ritual is being carried out in surrounding towns, Jackson effectively creates a growing sense of horror (for the reader) over what is happening. What are the the rules of Jackson’s lottery, which are simple and straightforward. The male head of each household—or, if he is absent, another representative of the family—draws a slip of paper out of a big black box. One householder will pull out a piece of paper that has a black mark crudely penciled on it. Each member of his family is then obliged to participate in a second drawing. This time the unlucky recipient of the black spot is stoned to death by the other townspeople, including the members of his or her own family. The story’s very outrageousness raises questions about unexamined assumptions in modern society. Do civilized Americans accept and act upon other vestiges of primitive ritual as arbitrary as the one Jackson imagines? Are we shackled by traditions as bizarre and pointless as the lottery in Jackson’s story? What determines the line between behavior that is routine and that which is unthinkable? How civilized

in fact are we?

In “A Biography of a Story” in Come Along with Me, Shirley Jackson describes the bewilderment and abuse she received from the letters of many New Yorker readers. (The full essay is printed at the end of the chapter following the story.) There she notes that the magazine issued one press release about the story, saying it “had received more mail than any piece of fiction they had ever published.” The response was so strong that some cancelled their New Yorker subscriptions as a result. She reflects: In the years since [1948], during which the story has been anthologized, dramatized, televised, and even—in one completely mystifying transformation—made into a ballet, the tenor of letters I receive has changed. . . . The letters largely confine themselves to questions like what does this story mean? The general tone of the early letters, however, was a kind of wide-eyed, shocked innocence. People at first were not so much concerned with what the story meant; what they wanted to know was where these lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and watch. Jackson once remarked that in writing “The Lottery” she had hoped “to shock

the story’s readers with a graphic demonstration of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives” (quoted by Lenemaja Friedman, Shirley Jackson [New York: Twayne, 1975]). What do you think Jackson means by this comment?  Is it true? In our own society, what violent behavior issanctioned? How are we comparable to Jackson’s villagers? Don’t we too casually accept the unthinkable?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/06/26/the-lottery