Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery: a Sketch of the Ethical Disaster
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is a weird story. It starts under a bright June sun in a quaint peaceful New England village focusing on the villagers coming to the annual lottery. Children are playing, villagers are talking pleasantly, and now and then their talk drifts to the lottery. One of the crowd, Tessie Hutchinson, comes late, nearly forgetting about the event distracted by some household task, and it is not until she “wins” in both tours, that the reader is informed about the purpose of the lottery. It is a ritual murder, a kind of sacrifice, which takes place every year in June in the community, and the story finishes with the woman being stoned to death by the crowd in the same matter-of-fact way they had been chatting in the beginning of the story. No doubt, when it was written in 1948 it was as shocking for its readers as it is today. Yet the tale is obviously more than a mere horror story. Closing the book, the reader cannot help wondering: The author must have meant something by it. What's its message? Although the critical view offers a reader a number of interpretations, the story is probably primarily about the latent moral crisis in the present-day society.
Critical interpretations of the story sometimes viewed it as reflecting the man’s inherent need for a cathartic cleansing sacrifice, performed by a community for its sins to be eliminated. Such a reading is suggested by life-and-death symbolism present in the story. Indeed, the characters' names (Mr Summer and Mr Graves), the date (midsummer, naturally connected with growth and harvest), Old Man Warner's words indicating a link between the Lottery and crops, all make the Lottery's victim look like an agricultural sacrifice. "What began as a vegetation ritual developed into a cathartic cleansing of an entire tribe or village." (Griffin). However, the villagers seem to forget the sacral purpose of the sacrifice, almost enjoying the execution part. "The story thus takes the stance that humanity's inclination toward violence overshadows society's need for civilized traditions" (Griffin).
But, firstly, suppose they believed either in its beneficial influence on crops or its cleansing power, would it justify the gruesome custom? And secondly, is not it a sick society, which strives to buy material or spiritual prosperity by its members' life?
It has even been viewed as a protest against capital punishment. This reading reduces the custom to "fictional arbitrary execution that appears to happen on a regular basis with the complete support of the citizenry". The custom continues notwithstanding some characters opposing it, and the researcher draws parallels between America of Jackson's story and real America. "Do we accept executions as part of our cultural tradition or do we question the manner in which they are performed?" (Shields)
Cultural tradition, though, has never been the central argument in favor of arbitrary executions. Protest against them is certainly more pronounced than Mrs Adams' timid remark that some places have given up the tradition. But the most crucial difference is in the innocence of its victim-to-be and universal participation, which makes the simile, if one was intended, a weak one.
Both interpretations share one key characteristic: thy concentrate on the particular rather than general, investigate details rather than the whole and view Tessie Hutchison as an innocent victim, as the title of Jackson's story stresses the element of chance during the process of selecting the person to be sacrificed. As Danielle Shaub points out, “most critics are puzzled by the final shock, its purpose and effect: they feel they are «only (left) shaken up» with «a sense of an unclosed gap». In fact their major concern seems to be with the anthropological allusions to the rituals of the summer solstice. Seymour Lainoff claims that «anthropology provides the chief symbol» so that the lottery is to be understood as a «modern representation of the primitive annual scapegoat rite». Brooks and Warren explain that the story reveals «the all-too-human tendency to seize upon a scapegoat» which Virgil Scott voices as «the human tendency to'punish' innocent and often accidentally chosen victims for our sins». None of them considers the possibility of punishment rather than random ritual murder taking place” (Shaub).
And the stoning suggests a punishment rather than a sacrifice. Stones are mentioned numerous times throughout the story. "The ominous collecting of stones cannot be overlooked. Stones are indeed the universal symbol for punishment and martyrdom: they can only be part of a morbid ceremony"(Schaub).
Stoning was used in ancient times as a sort of execution for serious crimes, such as adultery. Adultery is a sin which destroys the family, breaking the bond between two people. Destroying the family, it also destroys the society, as violation of one relationship results in violation of the other, crime against one authority threatens with crimes against other. Adultery was severely punished in numerous cultures precisely because of this hierarchy: family-community-society.
Though no adulteress, Tessie Hutchinson also violates the family bonds. Nearly every researcher, exploring the text of the story, has pointed out that she wishes to increase her chance to survive, making her married children take part alongside her in the second tour of the lottery: “The soullessness of Tessie Hutchinson even denies the myth of family love. When her family is chosen to supply the victim, Jackson pushes Tessie's survival instinct to the most shameful level by having her turn on her own flesh and blood. Tessie desperately tries to improve her odds for survival by defying tradition and adding her married daughter to the killing pool” (Coulthard). "There's Don and Eva," Mrs Hutchinson yelled. "Make them take their chance!" (Jackson) Her yell hardly evokes sympathy - mother wishing to prolong her life through one of her children's death. Even her husband, taking equal chances, behaves in a more reserved way, saying 'regretfully': "My daughter draws with her husband's family; that's only fair. And I've got no other family except the kids." (ibid.)
The parents - children bond in the community of the nameless village of the story seems to be broken. In the end of the story, "someone [gives] little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles" (Jackson). Instead of a mother stoning her own child, the child is urged to stone his mother. It only contributes to the macabre effect of the story. Noticeably, Mr Summers, one of the Lottery's masters of ceremonies (and presumably capable of providing immunity of his own family), is childless. He does not need children to increase his chance to survive the annual murder.
But family values are inverted and family ties are broken precisely because the society does not function properly. It consists of separate members, who view each other as potential victims and potential executioners. Before the lottery begins, "most of them [are standing] quiet, wetting their lips, not looking around". This implies understandable nervousness, but also is reminiscent of predators waiting for a feast. Are any voices raised against the lot of the Hutchinsons? "The crowd was quiet. A girl whispered, "I hope it's not Nancy," and the sound of the whisper reached the edges of the crowd." This single human whisper is immediately followed by the Old Man Warner´s discontented grumbling: "It's not the way it used to be. People ain't the way they used to be" (Jackson). Again, quite understandable. The revolting tradition successfully defends itself: "Why protest if I am safe? Lucky it's my neighbor this time, and hopefully it'll be another next year."
The inhuman society slowly devours itself, feeding on its own members. “It is not that the ancient custom of human sacrifice makes the villagers behave cruelly, but that their thinly veiled cruelty keeps the custom alive. Savagery fuels evil tradition, not vice versa,” argues Coulthard. And savagery and cruelty spring forth where ethical norms are forgotten or ignored. One of the families in the story bears a surname, habitually mispronounces by villagers and probably by its owners as Dellacroy. Pronounced in a correct way, it means "of the Cross" in French, thus raising powerful associations with the Calvary Sacrifice and either the hostile mob or the few disciples who have not abandoned Christ. The distorted name implies a distorted consciousness. Mrs Delacroix does not hesitate to throw a stone at one she has just been talking to, at her she possibly counted among her friends. Quite the opposite, she is enthusiastic. Tragically, Tessie would probably act in the same way. The Calvary Sacrifice is reversed: not One sacrifices Himself to provide spiritual redemption of others, but others sacrifice one to provide, supposedly, material prosperity of each, as most researchers agree that the original objective of the lottery was ensuring a good harvest. At the time of the narrative, however, when the original meaning of the ritual is forgotten and it goes on and on pointlessly, the sacrifice occurs to save – at the price of a random person’s life – the lives of other villagers from the relentless cogs of the pointless evil tradition. This becomes especially revolting on the family level, when it is either a parent, a child or a partner who saves the survivor.
So Tessie, like any member of the sick society, is punished by her own previous cruelty. As Coulthard put it, the story "expresses Shirley Jackson's abysmal opinion of her fellow creatures. Her simple villagers are not brainwashed victims but bloodthirsty victimizers. Ironically, it is probably this nihilistic undercurrent, and not the surface attack on subservience to custom, that gives this parable its continued appeal" (Coulthard). The effect is doubled by the fact that in other respects the villagers seem to be ordinary people – no worse than you and me. The sunny matter-of-fact beginning of the story emphasizes this message: “The scapegoating and mob frenzy that takes place in “The Lottery” seem to clash violently with the contemporary New England village setting. This graphic juxtaposition makes a strong statement about senseless violence and mindless social evil in modern times (Ball).”
This view is broader than any which ties the story to a particular social phenomenon and gives it a broader scope encompassing all of them. The absence of ethical principles results in unethical relationships within the family, which, in turn, endangers the health of entire society; a sick society may contaminate the whole global community. And the change for the best must also start at the basic, individual level to grow, expand and transform the world around us.
Coulthard, A.R. "Jackson's THE LOTTERY." Explicator 48.3 (1990): 226. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 1 Apr. 2013.
Ball, Janet M. "The Lottery." Magill’S Survey Of American Literature, Revised Edition (2006): 1. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
Griffin, Amy A. "Jackson's The Lottery." Explicator 58.1 (1999): 44. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 1 Apr. 2013.
Jackson, Shirley. "The Morning of June 28, 1948, and 'The Lottery.'" The Story and Its Writer. 2nd ed. Ed. Ann Charters. New York: St. Martin's P, 1987.
Schaub, Danielle. "Shirley Jackson's Use of Symbols in 'The Lottery.'." Journal of the Short Story in English 14 (Spring 1990): 79-86. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 187. Detroit: Gale, 2007.Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
Shields, Patrick J. "Arbitrary Condemnation And Sanctioned Violence In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." Contemporary Justice Review 7.4 (2004): 411-419. Academic Search Complete. Web. 1 Apr. 2013.
