A Reflection on Human Nature
When The New Yorker published Shirley Jackson’s famous story “the Lottery” in 1948, American readers immediately backlashed against the author and the magazine because they found the topic of the story—a mass stoning of a housewife whose name was drawn at random from a lottery—extremely offensive and grotesque. Readers went as far as cancelling their subscriptions to the magazine and numerous threatening mails started pouring in, addressed to the author and editorial staff of the magazine. Readers were also offended because many easily recognized their rural communities and the typical activities conducted in these places such as lotteries, square dances, fairs, and Halloween festivities. Somehow, readers felt Jackson was attacking and criticizing their values (American Literature.com). Some readers have also seen in the story blind conformity carried to extremes because the yearly ritual sacrificing of an individual goes on unquestioned (American Literature.com). A closer reading of the story, however, reveals a much deeper and universal meaning. In “The Lottery Shirley Jackson skillfully manipulates the setting of the story as a literary device to make the point that all human beings, even the most socially adjusted ones, are willing to tolerate and engage in the most cruel acts of violence toward other fellow human beings because of an inherent human capacity for evil and brutality that is patiently waiting for the first opportunity to explode with relentless violence.
They story opens on a bright sunny summer morning; “the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green” (Jackson130). The villagers were beginning to gather around the square for what seemed to be an ordinary lottery drawing that would take less than two hours. With school still in their minds, the children soon engage in “boisterous play” (131). One of the children, Bobby Martin, stuffs his pockets with stones and eventually all the children make a big pile of stones. The unsuspecting reader thinks of this activity as typical child’s play. The men also seem ordinary folks surveying their children and talking about “rain, tractors and taxes” (132). Soon the womenfolk arrive and it all seems like just another ordinary civic activity.
The first ominous sign of something terrible about to occur is the black box that Mr. Summers carries to the square. The black box contains slips of paper with the names of household leaders as well as lists with the names of the individual members of each family. Despite the fact that much of the tradition surrounding this lottery has been lost or forgotten, the leaders take their time to ceremoniously get ready for the ritual. At this point the author hints that this civic event is not entirely pleasant and that participation is compulsory. Mr. Summers urges everyone to proceed: ‘guess we better get started, get this over with, so we can get back to work’ (133). He also makes sure that everyone participates by making sure no one is absent. Jackson continues to provide ominous sign when the Wilson boy nervously states that he will draw for his mother, his father being presumably dead. There is a sense of dread and anxiety as each household head draws a piece of paper from the black box. The readers’ fears about the dreadfulness of the lottery are confirmed when it is revealed that it is Tessie Hutchinson who holds the piece of paper with the black dot and she begins to complain about the unfairness of the procedure. The author uncovers the sinister reality of the lottery when she states that “although the villagers had forgotten the ritual, and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (137). Soon the seemingly law-abiding citizens, including the children, are engaged in a gruesome mass stoning against the background of a beautiful summer morning.
Jackson depicts a group of villagers who follow blindly a tradition whose meaning they have long forgotten. Many parts of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded and the phrases and the salutes addressed to the villagers had been omitted from the ritual. Still, they cling tenaciously to the tradition, especially Old Man Warner, but they only go through the motions of a meaningless ritual. It is perhaps the present shallowness of the ritual that frightens the people of the town. Perhaps they would have gladly sacrificed themselves had they understood the meaning behind the ritual. Not only do the villagers manifest a conformist attitude in front of the civic leaders—Mr. Summers Mr. Graves and Mr. Warner-- but they display a selfish and callous attitude toward their neighbors, whom they have probably known all their lives. As long as they do not hold the paper with the black dot, everything is fine. Mrs. Hutchinson’s children do not show the slightest sign of empathy toward their mother as they both “beamed and laughed, turning around to the crowd and holding their slips of paper above their heads” (137).
The historical context of the story inescapably links the passivity and toleration on the part of the villagers for the brutal yearly sacrifice to the passivity of international leaders toward the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime in many parts of Europe. “The Lottery” also augured many of the instances of random and cruel violence that humanity would witness, sometimes passively during the second half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century (Berkowitz, 2014). The Rwanda Genocide of 1994, the Bosnia Genocide of 1995 and the September 11 attacks are but a few of the most powerful tragedies that illustrate the point. Unfortunately, the message conveyed by Jackson in “The Lottery “resonates in the twenty-first century with even greater force when one considers the savage and random killings of innocent and unsuspecting citizens in places like schools, government buildings, subway stations and night clubs committed in the United States, Europe and other parts of the world. The latest in the wave of such incidents occurred when more than 80 people in the city of Nice in the French Riviera, were murdered by a disturbed French Algerian on July 14, 2016. While the killings were perpetrated by a single individual, the similarity between the setting in France and in the “Lottery” is striking: it is a wonderful summer day, people are out in the streets, celebrating Bastille Day when the randomness and violence of the murders strike, turning a day of festivity into a gloomy day of mourning.
Work Cited
Berkowitz, Rogers. “The Banality of Evil and Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” 2014. Web. 19 July, 2016.
Jackson, Shirley. "The Lottery." Fifty Great Short Stories. Milton Crane, Ed. New York: Bantman Books Inc., 1971. 130-138. Print.
“The Lottery.” American Literature.com Web. 19 July, 2016
