The Lottery and Other Stories
by Shirley Jackson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Shirley JacksonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-03-16
ISBN: 0374529531
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Book Reviews of The Lottery and Other Stories
Book Review: "The Lottery" Rigged Against Women
Summary: 5 Stars
In the society of Ms. Jackson's "The Lottery," the reader's initial reaction to the surface appearance of both the town and its people is a favorable one. She pictures a healthy and happy small town that is simply brimming with a robust sense of nature: "The morning of June 27th was clear and shiny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green" The town seems centered on its annual lottery, an event which appears harmless enough, but as the story progresses, the reader learns the full and horrifying truth behind the lottery. The winner, chosen at random, is then ritually stoned to death by the willing participation of the town's inhabitants. Thus the "winner" is not a winner at all. With this ritualistic killing of one whose only misfortune is to pick the winning (losing?) paper, Ms. Jackson passes judgment on a society that seems to be full of the corn-fed Middle America types that abound in any painting by Norman Rockwell. It is the very ones who seem most like us that fill her tale with creepy horror.
The killing that terminates the plot may not have come as a surprise to the careful reader. Ms. Jackson drops hints from the second paragraph that this unnamed small town may have been the forerunner of the village that housed the robotic wives of The Stepford Wives. These delicate hints become obvious after multiple readings. The action begins with some little boys playing with pebbles and stones: "Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones." One of the other boys "made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys." It is these stones which will be later used against poor Tessie Hutchinson, the woman who pulled the X-marked ticket. Ms. Jackson also makes a subtle stab at a society which is male dominant. As the boys play with their lethal collection of stones, the girls do little more than watch as they are forbidden by their gender to participate. It is only against the one female who dares to speak out against such a rigid anti-female society that the Lottery punishes with a ritualistic killing.
Tessie Hutchinson is no angel of a woman. She is shrewish and is almost man-like in her attempts to break the gender barrier by speaking and acting in ways that the other townspeople disapprove. Tessie seems almost eager to join in the festivities as she crowds her way toward the mysterious black box that houses all the tickets. "Wouldn't have me leave m'dishes in the sink, now would you, Joe?" she asks.
Little by little it becomes increasingly clear that the object of the Lottery is to lose, not win. As the villagers begin to draw their tickets, Tessie thinks that another villager may have been given an unfair advantage; "You didn't give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn't fair," she shouts. Her husband Bill shows no sympathy for her as he responds, "Shut up, Tessie." Later Tessie yells, "There's Don and Eva. Make them take their chance!" Again Tessie moans, "It wasn't fair." It is this repetition of fair that suggests that deep down Tessie suspects that she will draw the losing ticket. Indeed, when Tessie does draw the ticket with the X, she shouts out in a vain attempt at sympathy, "It isn't fair, it isn't right." And then her friends and relatives kill her by stoning her in the Biblical way of death for adulterers. Even her little son Davey joins in with the killing of his mother.
In "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson portrays a society that looks much like ours on the outside, but in the killing of the scapegoat, she suggests that on the inside, we are perhaps much more like her friends than we might like to think.
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