Research
Paper on The Lottery by Shirley
Jackson
‘The Lottery’ by Shirley Jackson
was published in 1948. The ending of the story is unbelieving as
well as horrifyingly shocking. Patrick McGrath remarks that ‘The
Lottery’ is a haunting and powerful collection of stories from
one of America's finest writers. These stories are eerie,
unforgettable, terrifying and hilarious. Erica Bauermeister
remarks that Shirley Jackson's The Lottery is a memorable and
terrifying masterpiece, fueled by a tension that creeps up on
you slowly without any clear indication of why.
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One is left gasping at the tragic end in the form of a death. It
is not impossible for such a horrible tradition to have been
existed in a society. In fact, even more crazy and totally
brutal rituals have existed in many parts of the world. Wives
are still burned alive along with their dead husbands and girl
babies are killed for various reasons. Children killing, gender
discrimination, slave butchering, burying alive, killing of a
beautiful young girl as a sign of respect and plea to natural
phenomenas, Gods and Godesses have all existed in various parts
and societies of the world. There is an animal regularity and
passiveness in the emotions of the village inhabitants who begin
gathering in the square, between the post office and the bank,
around ten o'clock every year as if it is a ritual.
The most stunning feature of the story ‘The Lottery’ is the
normalcy of the society’s environment. Had it been a nomadic,
primitive society one would not have been as shocking. There is
total contrast between the social norms of behavior with the
‘must do’ tradition or ritual of lottery and brutal death of
Mrs. Hutchinson. It is also a fact that no one knew exactly
where this "lottery" originated from but that to give it up was
foolish idea. It is the human nature that when he comes under
the burning flame then they start thinking of the background of
the problems and the nature of the ritual. Again the person who
actually conducts the ritual of the lottery drawing is a jovial
man, Mr. Summers, who treats the conduction of this lottery just
as he treats any other event he conducts such as the square
dances, the teen club, the Halloween program. In fact he was
shown as someone who was appreciated for his time, effort and
consideration he devotes to this horrific event.
‘The Lottery’ actually incorporates within a black box, which is
worn and faded over the years. The color of the box is black for
a definite purpose of connoting the color of the death. The
black box initially used wooden chips but with the growth in the
number of villagers the wooden boxes have now been replaced with
papers. All of the villagers’ names are written on a piece of
paper for the drawing. This also shows that the villagers
attached a particular value to the black box itself and any
further usage of wooden chips would have made the black box
useless since it would not be able to hold so many chips as it
can hold papers. The villagers in the story, therefore,
considered the black box itself as a magic box also.
The almost rationally insane villagers also rationalized their
actions by believing that the lottery possessed a magical power
to weed out the people who were useless in the village and
didn’t work as much and as hard as the others. The
rationalization has also settled itself due to the length of
time involved and it’s being an old practice. With the passage
of time people stopped questioning the rationale behind the
terrible act. This also shows the powers of time. This is the
reason why children also have no feelings of sympathy with the
dying person. They are predisposed to this tradition of
cleansing the village of the black sheep. They even take part in
the killing and think of it as a play.
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The story is a terrific example of influence of an old civic
ritual of a society, which is so great that it eliminated all
forms of cognitive senses of society’s members. For example,
when Old Man Warner was told of discontinuation of this ritual
in other towns, he snorted, "Pack of crazy fools. Listening to
the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you
know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody
work any more, live hat way for a while. Used to be a saying
about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you
know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's
always been a lottery. Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up
there joking with everybody.”
Although, there is an indication tenseness within the members
such as most of them were quiet, wetting their lips, not looking
around when the lottery was about to start. On the other hand,
children gathered together stones and it gives an impression of
fun ahead. In the whole story, Mr. Summers is mentioned as being
a respected person does things formally. Our society today is
also normal apparently as in the story by all means. The effects
of the story on our society can be judged from the corrective
aspects. The very fact of popularity of the story as ‘shocking’
and ‘horrifying’ is proof enough of its non-acceptance as
normal. Our unconsciousness is provoked when we come to face the
reality of our actions and find such brutal things happening as
a civic norm. The very fact that such brutal acts are civil
norms and traditions give way to our acceptance of it as normal.
For example, there are many deadly sports that result in
injuries and deaths quite often such as wrestling, car racing
and boxing. Yet we enjoy these sports fully. Then there are
people doing various shows of stunts in public and in festivals.
People pierce different parts of their body with needles, they
bury themselves under soil for many days and perform all such
shows. Our society is positively provoked by the stunning end of
the story-giving rise to questioning our behavior. It gives rise
to the realization of a society towards even our normal behavior
that may have been unethical and brutal but due to custom and
practice have become a norm in our society. ‘The Lottery’ is a
perfect story showing the unique selfish nature of humans. They
want all the good things for themselves and all the bad ones for
others. This is especially obvious in this case when Mrs.
Hutchinson was selected and how she reacted when she found it
was she who was actually selected by the Lottery. Her reaction
changed all of a sudden from the one who took pains to come to
the occasion hurriedly for sake of not missing the event or in
other words for enjoying the killing of a person. She was ready
to take part in the killing but was not ready to accept such
death herself.
References:
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister
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