The lottery is very much a grim outlook on society. It carries with it themes that are almost moral outlooks or lessons regarding society.
Resistance to deviate from tradition or outdated thoughts, even when those traditions no longer make sense to us. One of the villagers in the story says, “We have always had a lottery as far back as I can remember. I see no reason to end it.”. The refusal to step back and examine the ritual dooms the villagers to continuing the gruesome tradition.
Mob mentality, following the crowd, sometimes leads to terrifying consequences. Once again, without examining the values and roots of the tradition, the villagers give themselves to a mob mentality. They remove any individual thought and go with the crowd.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
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."