The Lottery

The Lottery is a classic short story by Shirley Jackson, first published in the June 26, 1948 issue of The New Yorker.^[1]

The magazine and Jackson herself were surprised by the highly negative reader response. Many readers cancelled their subscriptions, and hate mail continued to arrive throughout the summer.^[2] The story was banned in the Union of South Africa.^[3] Since then, it has been accepted as a classic American short story, subject to many critical interpretations and media adaptations, and it has been taught in schools for decades.^[4]

Plot summary

The story contrasts commonplace details of contemporary smalltown American life with a sinister annual ritual known as "the lottery." The setting is a small "village" of about 300 people where the locals are in a strange and nervous mood on 27 June. Children gather up stones as the adult townsfolk assemble for their annual event. In the first round of the lottery, the head of each family draws a small slip of paper; Bill Hutchinson gets the slip with the black spot, meaning that his family has been chosen. In the next round, each Hutchinson family member draws a slip, and Bill's wife Tessie — who had arrived late — gets the marked slip. In keeping with tradition, which we learn has been abandoned by most other neighboring communities, Tessie is then stoned to death by everyone present as a sacrifice to ensure a good harvest ("Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon").

Reaction

Many readers demanded an explanation of the situation described in the story, and a month after the initial publication, Shirley Jackson responded in the San Francisco Chronicle (July 22, 1948):

Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.

Jackson lived in Bennington, Vermont, and her comment reveals she had Bennington in mind when she wrote "The Lottery." In a 1960 lecture (printed in her 1968 collection, Come Along with Me Jackson recalled the hate mail she received in 1948:

One of the most terrifying aspects of publishing stories and books is the realization that they are going to be read, and read by strangers. I had never fully realized this before, although I had of course in my imagination dwelt lovingly upon the thought of the millions and millions of people who were going to be uplifted and enriched and delighted by the stories I wrote. It had simply never occurred to me that these millions and millions of people might be so far from being uplifted that they would sit down and write me letters I was downright scared to open; of the three-hundred-odd letters that I received that summer I can count only thirteen that spoke kindly to me, and they were mostly from friends. Even my mother scolded me: "Dad and I did not care at all for your story in The New Yorker," she wrote sternly; "it does seem, dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days. Why don't you write something to cheer people up?"^[2]

The New Yorker kept no records of the phone calls, but letters addressed to Jackson were forwarded to her. That summer she began to regularly take home 10 to 12 forwarded letters each day. In addition, she also received weekly packages from The New Yorker containing letters and questions addressed to the magazine or editor Harold Ross, plus carbons of the magazine's responses mailed to letter writers.

Curiously, there are three main themes which dominate the letters of that first summer—three themes which might be identified as bewilderment, speculation and plain old-fashioned abuse. In the years since then, during which the story has been anthologized, dramatized, televised, and even—in one completely mystifying transformation—made into a ballet, the tenor of letters I receive has changed. I am addressed more politely, as a rule, and the letters largely confine themselves to questions like what does this story mean? The general tone of the early letters, however, was a kind of wide-eyed, shocked innocence. People at first were not so much concerned with what the story meant; what they wanted to know was where these lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and watch.^[2]

Critical interpretations

Helen E. Nebeker's essay, "The Lottery: Symbolic Tour de Force" in American Literature (March, 1974) claims that every major name in the story has a special significance

By the end of first two paragraphs, Jackson has carefully indicated the season, time of ancient excess and sacrifice, and the stones, most ancient of sacrificial weapons. She has also hinted at larger meanings through name symbology. "Martin," Bobby’s surname, derives from a Middle English word signifying ape or monkey. This, juxtaposed with "Harry Jones" (in all its commonness) and "Dickie Delacroix" (of-the-Cross) urges us to an awareness of the Hairy Ape within us all, veneered by a Christianity as perverted as "Delacroix," vulgarized to "Dellacroy" by the villagers. Horribly, at the end of the story, it will be Mrs. Delacroix, warm and friendly in her natural state, who will select a stone "so large she had to pick it up with both hands" and will encourage her friends to follow suit... "Mr. Adams," at once progenitor and martyr in the Judeo-Christian myth of man, stands with "Mrs. Graves"—the ultimate refuge or escape of all mankind—in the forefront of the crowd.

Fritz Oehlshlaeger, in "The Stoning of Mistress Hutchinson Meaning of Context in The Lottery" (Essays in Literature, 1988), wrote:

The name of Jackson's victim links her to Anne Hutchinson, whose Antinomian beliefs, found to be heretical by the Puritan hierarchy, resulted in her banishment from Massachusetts in 1638. While Tessie Hutchinson is no spiritual rebel, to be sure, Jackson's allusion to Anne Hutchinson reinforces her suggestions of a rebellion lurking within the women of her imaginary village. Since Tessie Hutchinson is the protagonist of "The Lottery," there is every indication that her name is indeed an allusion to Anne Hutchinson, the American religious dissenter. She was excommunicated despite an unfair trial, while Tessie questions the tradition and correctness of the lottery as well as her humble status as a wife. It might as well be this insubordination that leads to her selection by the lottery and stoning by the angry mob of villagers.

"Tessie" is a short form of the name Teresa which is thought to be derived from the Greek verb therizein ("to harvest").

Dramatizations

In addition to numerous reprints in magazines, anthologies and textbooks, "The Lottery" has been adapted for radio, live television, a 1953 ballet, a 1969 short film, a TV movie, an opera and a one-act play. NBC's radio adaptation was broadcast March 14, 1951 as an episode of the anthology series, NBC Presents: Short Story. Ellen M. Violett wrote the first television adaptation, seen on Albert McCleery's Cameo Theatre (1950–1955). Currently, the Acting Company offers a one-act production, directed by Douglas Mercer and adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher, which can be staged in school classrooms.^[5]

A final storyline in the soap opera, Dark Shadows (ABC-TV 1966-71) was based on The Lottery. Because of an ancestor's curse, in every generation of the Collins family, one member is chosen by lottery to spend a night in a haunted room, resulting in death or insanity. If the lottery is not held, all family members die. At the conclusion of the TV series, the lovers Bramwell Collins (Jonathan Frid) and Catherine Collins (Lara Parker) spend the night in the room and break the curse.^[6][7]

Larry Yust's short film, The Lottery (1969), produced as part of Encyclopædia Britannica's "Short Story Showcase" series, was ranked by the Academic Film Archive "as one of the two bestselling educational films ever." It has an accompanying ten-minute commentary film, Discussion of "The Lottery" by USC English professor Dr. James Durbin. Featuring the film debut of Ed Begley, Jr., Yust's adaptation has an atmosphere of naturalism and small town authenticity with its shots of pick-up trucks and townspeople in Fellows, California.^[8][9]

Anthony Spinner adapted the story into a feature-length TV movie, The Lottery, which premiered September 29, 1996, on NBC. As expanded by Spinner, the annual lottery is held for religious reasons, and the thriller storyline highlights a love story with the crazed townsfolk and the sadistic lottery as the backdrop. Director Daniel Sackheim filmed in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with a cast that included Keri Russell, Dan Cortese, Veronica Cartwright, Jeff Corey, Salome Jens and M. Emmet Walsh. It was nominated for a 1997 Saturn Award for Best Single Genre Television Presentation.

Augustin Kennady directed an 11-minute short, The Lottery (2007), on location in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania for Aura Pictures Limited. Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick and his parents portray the Hutchinson family.^[10]

The movie Population 436 has a similar theme.

References in other works

Steve Allen updated the past of public lynchings into his futuristic tale, "The Public Hating," published in Bluebook (January, 1955) and first collected in Allen's Fourteen for Tonight (1955). In Allen's story, filled with casual details of ordinary life, a condemned prisoner is executed by the intense, focused hatred expressed by the people surrounding him in Yankee Stadium and millions more watching on television.

In Stephen King's The Dark Tower III The Waste Land the characters Eddie Dean and Susannah discover a ritual similar to the one in "The Lottery".

In Suzanne Collins' book The Hunger Games, children aged 12 to 17 are entered in a raffle, and the chosen must fight to the death in a gladiator arena.

In an episode of Sliders, "Luck of the Draw," the sliders land in a world where the government employs a population-control lottery: in addition to winning a cash prize, the winners are put to death. In an episode of Adult Swim's Squidbillies series villain Dan Halen fixes the lottery so that Early Cuyler wins, only to reveal that he won his own execution, he eventually tries to execute Granny but instead of stoning her to death he attempts to have her ripped apart by monster trucks.

In the Simpsons episode Dog of Death (1992) the town is in the grip of lottery fever. Homer throws a copy of the book into the fireplace in disgust after TV anchorman Kent Brockman says that all copies of the "The Lottery" have been checked out of the Springfield library even though it "...has no clues on winning the lottery at all but is in fact a chilling tale of conformity gone mad."

An episode of South Park entitled "Britney's New Look" (2008) depicted Britney Spears as being chosen as a sacrifice to ensure a good corn harvest. Instead of being stoned to death, she was photographed until she died. Many lines of dialogue during the climactic scene pay homage to The Lottery, and several shots from the 1969 film are recreated. An old man expresses his distaste for the method of killing Spears by saying "used to be we just picked people by lottery, and stoned them to death." The mayor of the town in which they kill Britney Spears is named Mayor Summers, a reference to Mr. Summers.

Marilyn Manson made a music video for the 1996 single "Man That You Fear" based on the story.

Metalcore band From Autumn to Ashes have a video for the song Pioneers which is loosely based on the story.

In "Gilmore Girls" Rory Gilmore makes a reference to Mrs. Hutchinson being stoned stating ""oh yeah right after they stoned the woman who won the lottery" in "Lorelai's Graduation Day"

Listen to

• The New Yorker podcast: A. M. Homes discusses and reads "The Lottery"
• NBC Short Story: "The Lottery" (March 14, 1951)
• "The Lottery" read by Maureen Stapleton
• 1988 interview with Judy Oppenheimer

References

Sources

• Oppenheimer, Judy. Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson. New York: Putnam, 1988.

See also

• "The Lottery in Babylon"

External links

• Salon: Jonathan Lethem: "Monstrous Acts and Little Murders"
• The Lottery study guide and teaching guide - analysis, themes, quotes, multimedia for students and teachers