Flynn applies categories of reading to the interactions that students have with text. The most basic of categorizations includes that of a reader that dominates the text, that is one who distances themselves so much from the text because of lack of interest or lack of understanding that they fail to make a concrete connection to the text. However, the converse can also be a problem where the reader becomes so involved in the text that they lack distance to give an objective assessment of the story.
"The Lottery" I felt was an interesting story, and an initially confusing one at that. I feel that the confusing elements of the story make it hard to distance yourself from the text so much that you can't understand what is going on. By making the environment that you're viewing as a reader so obscure that something just doesn't seem right, it sucks you into the story. That isn't to say that I was so emotionally entwined in the story that I couldn't objectively analyze it. This is very obvious in the analyses that were given earlier. I tried to read the story for what it is, while taking different academic angles to perhaps expose something that I hadn't seen before. Searching for themes for instance, was a great way to look for something beyond the words, while character and plot analysis gave more of an examination of the words, searching for foreshadowing perhaps.
I feel that overall, I kept a good distance from the story while still managing to engage myself in its grim atmosphere. Perhaps this was because I got to pick the story, perhaps it was because I was aware of my interaction with the story.
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Brief Summary
"The Lottery" tells a story of a small American town which on the surface appears to be the home to roughly 300 average Americans. The town is readying itself for a ritual known only to the reader as "the lottery". The story begins on the clear and sunny morning of June 27th, however the mood of its residents is one of a strange, eerie nervousness. Children gather stones in hopes of a good harvest in the coming year, and the town collects around a small black box. In the first round of the lottery, the head of each household draws a slip of paper from the black box, followed by the second round where each family member draws a slip. After, each person checks their paper to see who's carries a black dot at the center. Tessie, a woman who arrives late to the lottery discovers that her paper bears the black dot, and such 'wins' the lottery. For her prize, Tessie is then stoned to death by the town.
About Shirley Jackson
- The Lottery
- Shirley Jackson (December 14, 1916, San Francisco, California - August 8, 1965, Bennington, Vermont) was an influential American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years. She has influenced such writers as Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Nigel Kneale and Richard Matheson. She is best known for the short story "The Lottery" (1948), which suggests a secret, sinister underside to bucolic small-town America. In her critical biography of Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when "The Lottery" was published in the June 26, 1948 issue of The New Yorker, it received a response that "no New Yorker story had ever received." Hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by, as Jackson put it, "bewilderment, speculation and old-fashioned abuse."