Shirley Jackson - The Lottery - Her Most Famous Short Story!

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver, and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

And I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to love Lit Podcast. Today we are finishing up our series on Shirley Jackson. Last week we concluded our discussion of her most famous book, the one that inspired the Netflix series by the same name The Haunting of Hill House. Today we are going to read the short story that made her a household name, “The Lottery.”

It has had its share of movie inspiration. Anyone who has seen the opening of The Hunger Games would not be shocked at the plot of “The Lottery.” It’s inspired a bunch of other stories and movies besides that one; I think you mentioned the Stephen King one last week. I’m sure there are way more than that if we sat here and thought about it.

True, and maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I was actually surprised as to how scandalous this story was when it was first published. If we’re talking solely about violence, by today’s standards, it’s mild. There is no blood or gore, it’s definitely no Squid Games.

I agree- and I believe that is why this story- so deceptively simple and relatively tame- is actually taught in the eight grade in many school systems. It’s disturbing for reasons beyond the fact that someone is killed at the end- kiiling a main character is just par for the course in a standard English curriculum- in fact, that’s the big joke among English teachers- we don’t teach a story if we don’t kill someone at the end. “The Lottery” reads and feels so simple. And it is…so why the sensation?

Let’s talk about the sensation, it’s definitely worth noticing how big a stir it actually created.

For starters, the story generated more negative letters and subscription cancellations than anything the New Yorker had ever published. Jackson herself received over 300 letters just the summer it was published. In her own words she said this, “I can count only 13 that spoke kindly to me.”

I want to point out that her mother, the ever-inspiring Geraldine could be counted on for a comment. She wrote her daughter with this to say, “Dad and I did not care at all for your story…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?”

Dear Ole’ Geraldine- at least she’s consistent. But Jackson refused to explain the meaning of the story. She did once tell a journalist, “I suppose I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the readers with a graphic demonstration of the pointless violence and general inhumanity of their own lives, but I gather that in some cases the mind just rebels. The number of people who expected Mrs. Hutchinson to win a Bendix washer at the end would amaze you.”

Ha! Well, I don’t know how pointless violence and general inhumanity could have surprised anyone in 1948 when it was published. That was right after world war 2, especially the United States, had to stare the reality in the face that we had stood by and turned a blind eye for almost a decade to the atrocities committed by Hitler, and there was no one more cultured or sophisticated than the German people.

I guess that’s true, but of course…for Americans that was always…over there…we, self-righteously could always claim we were not capable of such things...

we after all were the victorious winners in that struggle between good and evil. And yet, Jackson’s simple story does seem to be pointing an accusing finger at someone.

Yes, I totally think it does, and I do want us to take a different direction than many people who read this story. At first pass, and this is how I’ve most often heard this story discussed, this is a story that rails against tradition, against not questioning authority, specifically religious authority, against patriarchy…all very easy things to attack and very common in the American canon.

Well, not just in the arena of literature either. We’ve been attacking cultural norms in one form or another since American invented baseball as its own American sports ritual over the sport of the British Empire- football or better known here as soccer.

HA! I guess that’s true. We also have a way higher tolerance for gore than this story evokes- I mean we were comfortable with the headless horseman and the tell-tale heart. There was something personal about the Lottery that went beyond attacking traditions or killing an innocent victim. I also don’t think many of us would cancel our subscription to our favorite media streaming service (which would be the modern day equivalent), or take the trouble to dig up someone’s personal address and write them a personal letter if we did not feel personally attacked. “The Lottery” got under people’s skins because it was personal. So, that’s the question I want to ask? If this story is about pointless violence and general inhumanity, and if I’m offended because I feel personally accused, how?

So, let’s start- Christy, we talked about if we should read the entire story and then discuss it or if we should stop and start. We’ve decided to stop and start, but hopefully we won’t stop and start too much to be confusing, but just enough to be helpful- a difficult balance to strike.

True- Garry- we may fail, but let’s give it a go. Let’s start with the first three paragraphs and then we’ll interrupt.

Paragraphs 1-3

What are your thoughts?

Well, the thing that strikes me here is tone. Look at the imagery and word choice- it’s summer, there is fresh warmth- there are flowers blooming- there’s not just grass there’s richly green grass- this is the language of birth and beauty. There is also a deliberate attempt to characterize these people as organized and civilized- the lottery is annual, it takes less than two hours, they eat a noon dinner- the children don’t gather, they assemble- assemble is a formal word. There is a reference to school. They are being instructed and civilized so to speak deliberately – the word “liberty” is thrown around here. And yet what are they doing, they are stuffing their pockets full of stones- even the very small children. They assemble as family units, the very bedrock of civilization across time and culture- they stand together- united- and for a purpose that is upsetting to no one.

Let’s read the next four paragraphs and learn about the culture and traditions of this place.

Next four paragraphs

One funny thing that Jackson does in this story is play around with names. The names are all carefully selected- look at who’s conducting all of this, a man by the name of Summers- such a happy name associated with youth, strength, growth, life, all of it. But look at the other guy- Mr. Graves- he also is responsible for making up the slips of paper and putting the names in this black box. It’s a pun- a grave is a place where we put a dead body. It also means serious- like if you are in grave danger. The black box one time spent a year in Mr. Graves barn, but that’s not the only place it lives. He is not solely responsible for this black box. It’s spent a year in the post office and also in a grocery store owned by Mr. Martin.

Another thing that people have pointed to is all the possible symbolism in this story. It does seem that this box is a symbol, the three-legged stool is a symbol, the black mark is a symbol, even the stones are symbols. But for what? We should always annotate and follow the symbols, but I usually withhold judgement on what they mean until I’ve had time to think about the story as a whole.

And we’ve got more names- a lot of names actually. One that showed up earlier, but we didn’t address is name Delacroix- we’re even told the correct pronunciation of this name-

Dela-Croix- as in French for of the Cross

Yep- except they mispronounce it- they don’t say Delacroix like you’re supposed to say it- they say delacroy- a corruption of the original. And that sets up for me another a pattern that I see as you read through all these traditions. Traditions are not fixed- like people think they are.

No, They evolve like everything else on planet earth. We keep what we want and discard what we don’t like. On my wall, I have a poster that says all behavior is goal- directed- and that goes for entire cultures as well. No matter what we say, our behaviors speak for us- and they are all goal-directed. This is true for traditions as well- be it religious, ethical, or civic.

Jackson is very ambiguous about her relationship with religion here. I want to point out that this is not a religious ceremony, and she could have very easily and understandably made it one. Mr. Summers could have been Pastor Summers or Father Summers or Rabbi Summers, but he’s not any of these, he’s a businessman. I want to suggest what I think here about-that three legged stool- I do think it represents what holds up society in general- three aspects of societal authority or control- religious, civic and commercial- these three legs hold up the black box. They are working together, but none is running the show exclusively.

Well, if we’re going to guess at symbolism, I want to make a suggestion of my own.

Oh-okay- what do you want to suggest?

That black box. It’s power, it’s control. It’s black because fear controls. It’s dynamic in that it moves. It evolves over time, a...