"The Lottery" is a short story written by Shirley Jackson, first published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker. The story describes a fictional small town in contemporary America, which observes an annual rite known as "the lottery", in which a member of the community is selected by chance to be stoned to death. It is implied in the story that the lottery is practiced to ensure the community's continued well being. Readers' initial negative response surprised both Jackson and The New Yorker: subscriptions were cancelled, and much hate mail was received throughout the summer of its first publication, while the Union of South Africa banned the story. The story has been dramatized several times and subjected to much sociological and literary analysis, and has been described as one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature.
Plot
Details of contemporary small-town American life are embroidered upon a description of an annual rite known as "the lottery". In a small village of about 300 residents, the locals are in an excited yet nervous mood on June 27. Children gather stones, as the adult townsfolk assemble for their annual event, which in the local tradition is apparently practiced to ensure a good harvest. However, some other villages have already discontinued the lottery, and rumors are spreading that a village farther north is considering doing likewise. The lottery preparations start the night before, with coal merchant Mr. Summers and postmaster Mr. Graves drawing up a list of all the extended families in town and preparing a set of paper slips, one per family; all are blank, except for one later revealed to be marked with a black dot. The slips are folded and placed in a black wooden box, which in turn is stored in a safe at Mr. Summers' office until the lottery is scheduled to begin. Over the years, the box has become battered and discolored and has been stored in various places around town when not in use. On the morning of the lottery, the townspeople gather shortly before 10 a.m. in order to have everything done in time for lunch. First, the heads of the extended families each draw one slip from the box, but wait to unfold them until all the slips have been drawn. Bill Hutchinson gets the marked slip, meaning that his family has been chosen. His wife Tessie protests that Mr. Summers rushed him through the drawing, but the other townspeople dismiss her complaint. Since the Hutchinson family consists of only one household, a second drawing to choose one household within the family is skipped. For the final drawing, one slip is placed in the box for each member of the household Bill, Tessie, and their three children. Each of the five draws a slip, and Tessie gets the marked one. The townspeople stone her, as she screams about the unfairness of the lottery, and the slips blow away in the wind.
Themes
One of the major ideas of "The Lottery" is that of a scapegoat. The act of stoning someone to death yearly purges the town of the bad and allows for the good. This is hinted in the references to agriculture. The story also speaks of mob psychology and the idea that people can abandon reason and act cruelly if they are part of a large group of people behaving in the same manner. The idyllic setting of the story also demonstrates that violence and evil can take place anywhere and in any context. This also shows how people can turn on each other so easily. When or where it is set specifically, is never said, leaving some to consider it science fiction. Alongside the mob mentality, the story speaks about people who blindly follow traditions without thinking of the consequences of those traditions.
Reception
Readers
The New Yorker received a "torrent of letters" inquiring about the story, "the most mail the magazine had ever received in response to a work of fiction". Many readers demanded an explanation of the situation in the story, and a month after the initial publication, Jackson responded in the San Francisco Chronicle : Jackson lived in North Bennington, Vermont, and her comment reveals that she had Bennington in mind when she wrote "The Lottery". In a 1960 lecture, Jackson recalled the hate mail she received in 1948: The New Yorker kept no records of the phone calls, but letters addressed to Jackson were forwarded to her. That summer she regularly took home 10 to 12 forwarded letters each day. She also received weekly packages from The New Yorker containing letters and questions addressed to the magazine or editor Harold Ross, plus carbon copies of the magazine's responses mailed to letter writers.
Critical interpretations
Helen E. Nebeker's essay The Lottery': Symbolic Tour de Force" in American Literature claims that every major name in the story has a special significance. Fritz Oehlschlaeger, in "The Stoning of Mistress Hutchinson: Meaning and Context in 'The Lottery, wrote: The 1992 episode "Dog of Death" of The Simpsons features a scene referring to "The Lottery". During the peak of the lottery fever in Springfield, news anchor Kent Brockman announces on television that people hoping to get tips on how to win the jackpot have borrowed every available copy of Shirley Jackson's book The Lottery at the local library. One of them is Homer, who throws the book into the fireplace after Brockman reveals that "Of course, the book does not contain any hints on how to win the lottery. It is, rather, a chilling tale of conformity gone mad." In her book Shirley Jackson: Essays on the Literary Legacy, Bernice Murphy comments that this scene displays some of the most contradictory things about Jackson: "It says a lot about the visibility of Jackson's most notorious tale that more than 50 years after its initial creation it is still famous enough to warrant a mention in the world's most famous sitcom. The fact that Springfield's citizenry also miss the point of Jackson's story completely... can perhaps be seen as an indication of a more general misrepresentation of Jackson and her work." In "Arbitrary Condemnation and Sanctioned Violence in Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'", Patrick J. Shields suggests there is a connection between the death penalty and "The Lottery" when writing:
Adaptations
In addition to numerous reprints in magazines, anthologies and textbooks, a adptation to a comic "The Lottery" has been adapted for radio, live television, a 1953 ballet, films in 1969 and 1997, a TV movie, an opera, and a one-act play by Thomas Martin.
1951 radio version
A radio adaptation by NBC was broadcast March 14, 1951, as an episode of the anthology series . Writer Ernest Kinoy expanded the plot to include scenes at various characters' homes before the lottery and a conversation between Bill and Tessie Hutchinson. Kinoy deleted certain characters, including two of the Hutchinsons' three children, and added at least one character, John Gunderson, a schoolteacher who publicly objects to the lottery being held, and at first refuses to draw. Finally, Kinoy included an ending scene describing the townspeople's post-lottery activities and an afterword, in which the narrator suggested: "Next year, maybe there won't be a Lottery. It's up to all of us. Chances are, there will be, though." The production was directed by Andrew C. Love.
Television adaptation
Ellen M. Violett wrote the first television adaptation, seen on Albert McCleery's Cameo Theatre.
1969 film
Larry Yust's short film The Lottery, produced as part of Encyclopædia Britannicas "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 University of Southern California English professor James Durbin. Featuring Ed Begley Jr. as Jack Watson in his third film, Yust's adaptation has an atmosphere of naturalism and small-town authenticity with its shots of pickup trucks in Fellows, California, and the townspeople of Fellows and Taft, California.
1996 TV film
Anthony Spinner's feature-length TV film The Lottery, which premiered September 29, 1996, on NBC, is a sequel loosely based on the original Shirley Jackson story. It was nominated for a 1997 Saturn Award for Best Single Genre Television Presentation.
