The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Summary

The setting for this story was New England. In this story, villagers gathered in the square on a warm day in late June to participate in a lottery run by Mr Summers, who officiated at all the major civic events. The kids were the first to arrive and began collecting stones until their parents called them to order. Mrs Hutchinson arrived late and briefly spoke with Mrs Delacroix, her friend. Mr Summers summoned each head of the household (always a grown man) to a black wooden box, from which each chose a slip of paper. Mr Summers allowed everyone to open the paper and see who had been chosen after the men had chosen. Bill Hutchinson was chosen as the lucky winner. His wife immediately began to object. The Hutchinson family consists of five members. Mr Summers placed five slips of paper into the box, and each family member drew one. Mrs Tess Hutchinson drew a large black dot in the centre of a slip of paper. As the villagers surrounded her, it became clear that the lottery’s true prize was stoning to death. Tess screamed in vain as the villagers assaulted her.

Specific Details

The specific details Jackson describes at the start of “The Lottery” prepare us for the shocking ending. Jackson provides specific details about the day of the lottery in the first paragraph. She informs us of the date (June 27), the time (around 10 a.m.), and the temperature (warm). She describes the scene precisely: there are flowers and green grass, and the town square, where everyone congregates, is located between the bank and the post office. She gives information about the town, such as how many people live there and how long the lottery takes, as well as information about neighbouring towns, which have more people and must begin the lottery earlier. In the paragraphs that follow, Jackson gives us the full names of the characters, including Bobby Martin, Harry Jones, and Dickie Delacroix, and even explains how to pronounce “Delacroix.”

These initial specific details, far from being superfluous or irrelevant, ground the story in reality. Because she places the story firmly in a specific place and time, Jackson appears to imply that the story will be a sort of chronicle, describing the lottery tradition. The specifics continue throughout the story, from Mr Summers’ numerous rules to the names of those called up to the box. In some ways, these details provide comfort—the world Jackson creates appears to be similar to our own. The stoning then begins, flipping reality on its head. Because Jackson is so meticulous in grounding us in realistic, specific details, the violence is sharpened and the ending is so incredibly unexpected.

What Happens in The Lottery?

The residents of a small New England village gather in the town square on June 27th to conduct the lottery. Mr Summers, the lottery official, places the black box in the centre of the square. The postmaster, Mr Graves, arrives with a stool for the black box.

• Mr Summers takes a quick roll call. Because Clyde Dunbar is at home recovering from a broken leg, his wife will draw lots for him. Similarly, the Watson boy creates artwork for his mother.

• At long last, the lottery begins. Each of the village’s three hundred or so residents draws a piece of paper from the black box. Bill Hutchison, the head of his household, draws a black dot on a piece of paper.

• A second lottery is held, but this time there are only five slips of paper, one for each member of Bill’s family. Tessie, Bill’s wife, creates the black dot. Even as her neighbours begin stoning her to death, she protests that the drawing was unfair.

Analysis of The Lottery

“The Lottery” is a standard in anthologies and one of the most frequently reprinted stories in history. It is a gothic horror story, a thriller designed to build suspense, and a mystery that leaves the reader wondering why. It is also a parable about human nature’s eternal nature.

In human civilizations all over the world, from ancient ceremonies to contemporary politics, it has always been usual to sacrifice a scapegoat for what is considered to be the good of the group. The sacrifice in “The Lottery” is disturbing since it occurs at an inappropriate time. As evidenced by allusions to previous loterries in other places, an innocent person is practically stoned to death every year, everywhere. Words like “menfolk” and the term “village” at the story’s start conjure images of rural America, possibly the Midwest. With the exception of dates in June, neither regional nor temporal specificity is provided, which suggests universality. Figuratively speaking, these characters are acting in ways that people have always acted. Since the civilizations of tribes like the Aztecs were replaced by western civilisation, literal human sacrifice has not been carried out as a public ceremony in this hemisphere. The movie “The Lottery” should be viewed as an old myth that reveals facts about human nature.

Techniques heighten the plot’s shock value. The natural mode of myth and dream is Expressionism, whereas Shirley Jackson renders her myth with a Realism that, paradoxically, makes it appear unnatural. The townspeople’s lighthearted, even festive, demeanour on the verge of death or assisting in the murder of their own spouse or child is monstrous. Despite this, the story appears to be an example of the commonplace regionalism popular in the late nineteenth century, authentic in dialect and rendering customs and manners. The meticulous narration detailing individual actions as the lottery is conducted, step by step, heightens the illusion of reality and heightens suspense. Weather is almost always used in fiction and film to create an atmosphere that expresses a mood that corresponds to the plot, tone, and theme. In this story, Jackson flips our conditioned expectation, leaving us surprised.

The morning is “clear and sunny,” creating a peaceful scene in the town square. This appears to be a place where the government caters to the citizens, as the lottery time has been set to “allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.” School is out for the summer, which is likely to evoke nostalgia in most readers, luring them back into a familiar frame of mind. Children typically represent innocence, and the story keeps them in the foreground to heighten the horror when the lots are drawn. The boys then begin gathering stones into “a large pile.” Following this foreshadowing, evidence of what is to come accumulates, but the people’s conversations are mundane. Their complacent attitudes turn sinister, as do their actions.

The cheerful Mr. Summers runs the lottery and the Halloween programme, reminding us that witches used to be executed for the good of the community. He also organises square dances and a teen-age club, implying that all of these activities are equally beneficial and enjoyable. Summer is the most enjoyable season for most people, but it is only one of four. Mr. Summers runs the coal industry, which keeps people warm in the winter by providing a fuel made of dead organisms in the season of death. Mr. Graves, who assists with the lottery, follows him as he marks the black spot on the slip of paper indicating a death sentence and carries the black wooden box resembling a coffin.

Allegorical names and other details connect in a logical pattern of implications. After Summers and Graves, the most explicitly allegorical name is Old Man Warner, the tenacious defender of tradition and a warner throughout the story. Among the names drawn in the lottery, Bentham stands out as a possible reference to Jeremy Bentham, the founder of Utilitarian philosophy, whose cold-eyed doctrines could be used to justify the annihilation of minorities, the disabled, or the elderly—victims by chance. Another allegorical name, Adams, appears in American literature, evoking the myth of the naive American Adam, the belief that America is a new Eden in which Americans are liberated from history and human nature, a popular illusion among the young. Delacroix was a famous French romantic painter who celebrated the French Revolution, reminding us of its excesses that flipped France from a leftwing revolution to Napoleon’s rightwing regime. Hutchinson, a reference to Anne Hutchinson, who was not innocent, is the most significant historical name in the story. She was exiled in 1638 after preaching rebellion in Puritan Massachusetts.

Mrs. Hutchinson is washing dishes when she arrives late for the ritual, explaining, “Clean forgot what day it was.” She, like the Delacroix family, deviates from her namesake. She does not object to the procedure until her family’s name is drawn. She then creates the black spot. Mrs. Delacroix advises her to “be a good sport,” but Mrs. Hutchinson now complains about how unfair the lottery is. Of course, the reader agrees, but Hutchinson is not entirely sympathetic because she accepted the lottery until she herself is affected by it. By her age, she must have participated in the stoning of twenty to thirty of her neighbours and relatives. Her hypocrisy makes her untrustworthy. The lottery, though horribly unfair, is egalitarian, and the killers are enforcing the will of the people. Anyone who does not believe in the lottery can physically leave, but the lottery is inescapable metaphorically. Life is a lottery that we all eventually lose, and anyone can win at any time.

“There’s always been a lottery,” says Old Man Warner, who represents the status quo. The rural community is staunchly conservative. “No one liked to upset even as much tradition as the black box represented,” but the box is becoming dingier by the year. “Despite the fact that the villagers had forgotten the ritual and had lost the original black box, they remembered to throw stones.” Even if the ritual’s form is lost or worn out, they will replace it because they must throw stones. The author is conservative in her assessment of human nature. The lottery, according to Old Man Warner, is progressive because it teaches people to accept reality. He sees those who oppose the ritual as undisciplined and lazy, and uses the lottery as a metaphor. Marxists regard capitalism as a lottery in which many people unfairly lose. President Barack Obama recently referred to the wealthy as “lottery winners.” A conservative would reject the lottery as a metaphor for an economic system that recognises and rewards talent and hard work. After all, the village’s capitalist economy appears to be doing well.

Mrs. Hutchinson is implicitly chastised for failing to become a rebel like Anne Hutchinson in time to save herself and others. Anne, on the other hand, did not save herself by rebelling. She was exiled from the community and was later killed by Indians. “The Lottery” was first published in The New Yorker, and it blames rural conservatives for primitive stupidity, cruelty, and injustice, as if New Yorkers never throw stones. This subtle leftist political implication deep in the story tends to be propaganda, but it does not detract from the story as a whole. Furthermore, the lottery metaphor’s universality includes New York, the world capital of stupidity, cruelty, and injustice. Politics loses to art. After Old Man Warner dies, perhaps the villagers will stop being so literal and progress by transforming the lottery into a Christian-style ritual of symbolic death and rebirth.

In Moby-Dick, an oppressive tradition is represented by a stinking dead whale still afloat at sea, as well as a reference to Jeremy Bentham. In As I Lay Dying, Faulkner satirises rigid and selfish adherence to tradition by having the Bundren family cart Addie’s stinking corpse across the countryside to bury her in Jefferson. “Every tradition grows ever more venerable the more remote its origin, the more confused that origin is,” said Friedrich Nietzsche. The reverence for it grows from generation to generation. The tradition becomes holy and awe-inspiring.”

Themes of The Lottery

The Danger of Blindly Adhering to Custom

Each year, the village lottery concludes in a brutal murder, a weird ceremony that illustrates the dangers of blindly following tradition. The villagers and their preparations appear innocent, even amusing, before we discover the nature of their lottery: they’ve picked a rather pitiful man to manage the lottery, and children are gathering stones in the town square. Everyone appears to be concerned with a strange-looking black box, and the lottery consists primarily of homemade slips of paper.

Tradition is intrinsic to small towns, serving as a means of connecting generations. Jackson, on the other hand, undermines people’s veneration for tradition. She writes that the locals don’t know much about the genesis of the lottery, but they strive to keep the practise alive.

Due to the villagers’ unquestioning acceptance of the lottery, ritual murder has become an integral part of their community. They have proved that they feel powerless to alter or even attempt to change anything, despite the fact that no one is compelling them to maintain the status quo. Old Man Warner is so devoted to tradition that he believes the people would revert to the Stone Age if the lottery is discontinued. These everyday folks, who have just returned from work or their homes and will shortly return for lunch, are able to execute a murder order with ease. And they have no other motive for doing so than the fact that they have always held a lottery to murder someone. If the villagers questioned it, they would be compelled to ask themselves why they are committing murder; yet, no one questions it. Tradition is sufficient justification for them and provides them with all the rationale they require.

The Unpredictability of Persecution

Randomly, villagers persecute villagers, who have committed no wrongdoing other than drawing the wrong slip of paper from a box. The intricate procedure of the lottery is intended so that every villager, even youngsters, has an equal chance of becoming a victim. Each year, a new victim is selected and murdered, and no family is safe. What makes “The Lottery” so unsettling is how quickly the townsfolk turn against the victim. As soon as Tessie Hutchinson selects the designated slip of paper, she ceases to be a well-liked homemaker. Her family and friends participate in the murdering with the same zeal as everyone else. In the fervour of persecution, Tessie becomes basically invisible to them. Although she has committed no “crimes,” her innocence is irrelevant. She has drawn the marked paper—she herself has been marked—so, according to the logic of the lottery, she must perish.

Tessie’s killing is an extreme illustration of how communities can condemn innocent individuals for irrational reasons. All prejudices, whether they are based on race, sex, appearance, religion, economic status, geographical location, family background, or sexual orientation, are essentially random, making it easy to draw comparisons to the present. Those who are persecuted are “marked” due to an uncontrollable attribute or quality, such as being the “wrong” sex or from the “wrong” region of the country. In the same way that the villagers in “The Lottery” blindly follow tradition and murder Tessie because it is expected of them, people in real life frequently punish others without considering why. According to Jackson, such harassment is essentially random, which explains why Tessie’s odd demise is so pervasive.

Symbols of The Lottery

The Black Box

The dingy black box symbolises both the tradition of the lottery and the irrational devotion of the locals to it. After years of use and storage, the black box is virtually coming apart and is barely even black anymore, yet the villagers are unwilling to replace it. Their attachment is based only on a story claiming that this black box was assembled from fragments of an older black box. Similar vestiges from the past, such as the construction of family lists and the use of stones, are evident in the lottery. This is part of the tradition from which no one wishes to deviate; the lottery must be conducted exactly as it has always been done. Other lottery traditions, however, have been altered or lost. The locals, for instance, substitute paper slips for wood chips. The villagers have no rational reason to be devoted to the black box but not to other artefacts and traditions, just as there is no logical justification for them to continue holding the lottery.

The Lottery

The lottery symbolises any action, behaviour, or notion that is transferred from one generation to the next and unquestioningly obeyed, regardless of how illogical, weird, or cruel. Since time immemorial, the lottery has been held in the village. It is a tradition, an annual custom that nobody has questioned. It is such an integral part of the town’s culture that it is accompanied by a proverb: “Lottery in June, grain will be heavy shortly.” Despite the fact that many aspects of the lottery have altered or disappeared over the years, the villagers remain devoted to it, or at least they convince themselves that they do.

Nonetheless, the lottery persists because there has always been a lottery. As a result of this ritual, everyone becomes complicit in murder annually. The lottery is an extreme example of what might occur when younger generations fail to challenge or critically examine customs.