The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson at the Wikipedia: click here

The Lottery at the Wikipedia: click here

The Lottery: study guide

The Lottery: audiobook

The Lottery: review

The Lottery, short movie:

Presentation, by Remedios Benéitez

Biography

Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco, California, in 1916, and spent her childhood in Burlingame, California, when she began writing poetry and short stories as a young teenager. Her family moved east when she was seventeen, and she attended the University of Rochester, New York.

She entered Syracuse University, N.Y., in 1937, where she met her future husband, the young aspiring literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman. Both graduated in 1940 and moved to New York’s Greenwich Village, where Shirley wrote without fail every day. She began having her stories published in The New Republic and The New Yorker.

In 1945 her husband was offered a teaching position at Bennington College, and they moved into an old house in North Bennington, Vermont, where Shirley continued her daily writing while raising children and running the house.

Her first novel The Road Through the Wall was published in1948, the same year that The New Yorker published her iconic story The Lottery.

She composed six novels, including The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, two memoirs and more than 200 short stories.

She was a heavy smoker and suffered numerous health problems. In 1965, Shirley died in her sleep at her home in North Bennington, at the age of 48.

THE LOTTERY

It is a short story by Shirley Jackson published in the magazine The New Yorker on June 26, 1948. Reaction to the post from readers was negative, who sent protest messages to the magazine, but later it was accepted as a classic short story subject to interpretations. Now it’s considered as “one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature”. It has been adapted for radio, theatre and television.

 Argument:

The lottery takes place on a beautiful summer day, June 27, in a small town of 300 inhabitants, where all residents gather for a traditional annual lottery.

Although the event seems festive at first, people show a strange and gloomy mood, and it soon becomes clear that no one wants to win the lottery.

The draw is carried out between the heads of the family. The Hutchinsons are chosen and then the draw is made within the chosen family, getting chosen Tessie (the mother), so she is stoned to death by all the neighbours of the town, including his own family. This is a sacrifice to ensure a good harvest, according to the beliefs of the community.

I think that this is a story about the human capacity for violence. It explores ideas such as communal violence, individual vulnerability and the dangers of blindly following traditions.

We rely on collective violence in those circumstances that we would not be able to consider individually.

ISSUES

The quid of the story is that the people seem normal, nice and even happy, and they go to the square as they would go to the market, with an informal attitude, they chatter and gossip; even the day is sunny, the children don’t have school because they start the summer holidays and the procedures of the lottery are simple and common. So the jewel of the story is the ending; we don’t imagine that something horrifying is going to happen. The villagers aren’t afraid, although we suspect that something surprising can happen, because there’s too much happiness, and we have had some hints, e.g., they collect stones, there is somebody missing, Mrs Hutchington says “it isn’t fair”, etc. So in this case we have a story that loses all its effect when we know the end; the story has a punch, but as soon as we know that it’s going to hit us at the end, we are alert and don’t get hurt (symbolically) any more. A similar classical and very famous story of this kind is Monkey’s Paw, by W.W. Jacobs. I strongly recommend its reading if you like these kind of stories: it’s short and easy to read with a lot of dialogue.
👉So, what kind of stories do you prefer: the ones with a clear ending or the ones without?

I think the main topic of the story is tradition, what we do with tradition. According to the dictionary “tradition is a custom or way of behaving that has continued for a long time in a group of people”, but, for me, another definition is also possible: tradition is what you do because someone before you did, not because it’s reasonable to do. So you don’t think about the action and its consequences, you don’t think about the reason why. Accordingly, tradition is opposite to progress.What is your point of view about traditions? Do you remember the tradition in Julian Barnes’s story, that one about sleeping on a mattress in a barn on the wedding night? And I particularly remember the tradition of burying the mother’s placenta when there is a birth (as someone in my family told me).
👉Can you tell us a very unreasonable tradition you know? 

Something similar happens with proverbs and sayings. A typical case of a saying that can be false is “Better the devil you know than the devil you don't”. And in the story there is also a saying: “Lottery in June / corn be heavy soon.”
👉Are all sayings clichés? Can you explain a saying that isn’t exactly true? I give you some examples:

The pen is mightier than the sword.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
 Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
You are what you eat.
A watched pot never boils.
The grass is always greener on the other side.
Time heals all wounds.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Slow and steady wins the race.
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
Love is blind.
You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

 

...

In the story, the tradition has lost some parts of the ritual, or some things have been changed, e.g., using papers instead of pieces of wood for the draw. Do you think that this is because traditions tend to keep the essential parts and forget the less important ones?
👉What is your opinion about rituals? Are they necessary for our everyday lives? And are they useful for ceremonies, social situations as a wedding or a funeral?

The story is situated in a small village of 300 inhabitants.
The smaller the society the stronger and less sound are the traditions?
👉What is your view on this?

Mrs Hutchington says “it isn’t fair”. Why? Because she thinks something in the procedure wasn’t correct, or because she knows she’s going to be stoned?
👉In which societies they did lapidation and in which countries they're still doing now?

So being lucky is another important theme in our narration. There’s a wonderful story about the fortune (in the classical or Greek sense) or the destiny ruling our lives: La loteria en Babilonia by Jorge Luis Borges. In the Æneid, they say: Fortune helps audacious people, that is, “chance is something you don’t have: that’s something you must look for”. Or: you cannot wait your chance sitting down, you have to stand up and go for it.
👉In your opinion, do our lives depend most on luck or most on our personal decisions?

Another topic you can find in The Lottery is the question of the scapegoat; that means that, when there are catastrophes or phenomena you aren’t able to explain, you attribute them to some sin or bad action someone has done, and so this person has to pay for it, and, if you don’t know the guilty one, you’ll have to choose someone (using a lottery, e.g.) to pay for it. That will stop new disasters. Religion explains this as a sacrifice: you have to do a sacrifice to soothe the gods, and that means killing an animal or a person. You already know the legend of Saint George and the Dragon: every year they had to choose a maiden to feed the Dragon.
👉Can you remember other examples of scapegoats?