The lottery door Shirley Jackson

The Lottery

Shirley Jackson

1948

Foreword

I chose this story because it was available on Somtoday. The way the story starts by painting a pleasant setting in a sunny small town, gradually revealing the true sinister nature of the lottery, makes it for a very interesting and compelling read.

Summary

The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny. Summer had arrived and so all the children were free from the classrooms and playing in the street. The boys were collecting stones while the girls stood aside talking amongst themselves. Today was the day of the annual lottery in this small village of three hundred. 

The men of the village gathered into the village square, followed by the women who called their children so all stood together with their family. Mr Summers and Mr Graves entered the square carrying a small black wooden box and a three-legged stool. The box was set on the stool and Mr Summers stirred up the papers inside it.

The original box and ritual surrounding the tradition had been lost to time. Even the current box was showing its age; it was faded, stained and splintered. Yet no one wanted to replace it as they did now want to alter the tradition. The only change that they had ever made was to replace the wood chips with paper slips because the chips no longer fit in the box as the village had grown in population over the years.

Tessie Hutchinson hurried to the square, she had forgotten what day it was. She makes her way through the good-humoured crowd and joins her husband, Bill Hutchinson. Mr Summers begins calling the head of each household one by one to draw from the box. Once everyone has drawn, the slips of paper are unfolded. 

Bill has drawn the marked slip. Tessie cried that it wasn’t fair and that Mr Summers hadn’t given him enough time to take any paper he wanted. The crowd dismisses her calls for sympathy and Mr Graves tells her to be a good sport about it. 

The Hutchinsons and their children each draw another slip from the box. First, their son Davy shows his blank paper to a relieved crowd. Bill Jr. and Nancy, their son and daughter, happily open their blank papers. Bill’s paper is blank too. Bill turned to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her and held it up to the crowd. It had the pencil dot that Mr Summers had made just the night before.

‘Let’s finish it quickly,’ Mr Summers said. The crowd all grabbed the stones that the children had gathered and moved on Tessie who was in the centre of a cleared space by now. ‘It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,’ Mrs Hutchinson exclaimed before she was promptly stoned to death.

Themes

Important themes in ‘The Lottery’ are traditionalism, herd mentality, family and gender hierarchy, and scapegoatism.

The most important theme in ‘The Lottery’ is traditionalism. The purpose of the lottery never becomes clear in the story and the villagers do not seem to know the purpose either. The original paraphernalia and ritual around the tradition having long been lost and the arbitrary way that Mr Summers makes the slips of paper just the night before implies that the lottery has no religious or mystical reason behind it. Seemingly the only reason the villagers want to keep the tradition and keep it unchanged is that it always has been; that’s just the way things are. Calls to end or change the tradition are seen as calls for regression, equated to going back to living in caves.

Analysis of main characters

Tessie Hutchinson

Tessie Hutchinson is the wife of Bill Hutchinson. She was selected by the lottery to be sacrificed and was then stoned to death by the other villagers. Her jubilant attitude changed drastically when she realised that a member of her family was going to be executed.

Joe Summers

Joe Summer is the official for the lottery. He devotes much of his time to civic activities. People pity him because he has no children and an unkind wife.

Old Man Warner

Old Man Warner is the oldest person in the village and an ardent supporter of the lottery having participated 77 times already. He equates stopping the lottery to going back to a more primitive state and he believes that it is the lottery that separates civilisation from barbarism. His staunch support of keeping the lottery makes him the personification of the village’s desire to adhere to the tradition.

Historical context

‘The Lottery’ was written in 1948. Jackson’s story covers the human capacity for violence, a topic not uncommon in literature following the violence seen in the Second World War. The story may have been written in direct response to this violence during the war, but it is also connected to more ancient events of ritual sacrifice and the Biblical punishment of stoning.

Quotations

‘Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes. They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed. The women, wearing faded house dresses and sweaters, came shortly after their menfolk. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip as they went to join their husbands. Soon the women, standing by their husbands, began to call to their children, and the children came reluctantly, having to be called four or five times.’

The villagers gather in the square separately; first, the men, followed by the women and then the children. This highlights the importance they put in the hierarchy within their families.

‘There was the proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the official of the lottery; at one time, some people remembered, there had been a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory, tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each year; some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to walk among the people, but years and years ago this part of the ritual had been allowed to lapse.’

The villagers value their tradition a lot despite having forgotten much of the ritual surrounding it. This might suggest that they have forgotten the original purpose of the lottery as well and that the lottery is now merely a cruel meaningless tradition that they simply conform to because they do not want to stand out.