The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson
Read it here in less than 20 minutes.
Thinking about why I love it…
Halloween month is almost upon us, so what better than a bit of Shirley Jackson to get us in the mood for spooks and scares.
I love this story because it’s shocking. The first time you read it, the nice little details of life in this picturesque town lull you into a false state of security, which makes the horrific ending hit even harder.
I love the juxtaposition that these nice little details – some subtle, some less so – creates. For example, the children are ironically described as having a ‘feeling of liberty’ because school has finished for the summer; their freedom is juxtaposed with Mrs. Hutchinson’s inability to escape her fate at the end of the story.
I love that re-reading it makes you revaluate those nice little details, e.g. the first paragraph tells us the town is so small the lottery ‘could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner’; we learn that the school children have already collected stones in anticipation; Mrs. Dunbar speaks ‘regretfully’ when she says her son isn’t old enough to participate in the lottery. Once you know what the lottery ‘prize’ is, these details shows the villagers, including the young children, as callous monsters.
Jackson wrote this story to critique how mindlessly following traditions can lead to inhumanity (Old Man Warner notes ‘There’s always been a lottery’), which is something that seems worth remembering right about now.
Mina Ma 