Shirley Jackson: The Lottery

It may be as simple as speaking up.

In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” published by The New Yorker in 1948, no one spoke up.

The story begins with villagers gathering in a town square to participate in an annual lottery. Their concern for the event is so little, so inconsequential, they gather early to finish before lunch. This lottery has taken place for longer than anyone can remember, its origin and reason for being forgotten over time. Although surrounding towns have abandoned similar lotteries, the villagers in this town are complacent. They allow it to continue, viewing it as little more than tradition. Maybe they’re superstitious. Maybe they’re self-absorbed. Maybe they feel untouchable. Turns out, the lottery is anything but benign. It is not innocent. It’s, in fact, horrific, shocking. It leads to death by stoning for a member of the family with the chosen lottery ticket.

At the time of publication, “The Lottery” was met with angst and anger by readers. Almost no one liked it. Still, they read it. The story sold out that month’s issue of The New Yorker and created a maelstrom of conversation. It hit a nerve, inciting an avalanche of letters to the editor and to Jackson, herself. People took affront. The vast majority of letters were vitriolic. Readers wanted to know what Jackson meant by the story. Was she taking a jab at “small town America” or was it, according to one literary critic, “a chilling tale of conformity gone mad.” The term “herd mentality” comes to mind.

Would readers have the same reaction should the story come out now? Would it be seen as an indictment on our country at this point in time? In a recent 25-hour filibuster before the Senate, Cory Booker of New Jersey might well have cited “The Lottery” as prescient. In an interview in The New Yorker consequent to the filibuster he posited the question:

“Why are so many good people with power and privilege remaining so silent, keeping their frustration and outrage to quiet conversations with their friends? When is it enough? That is the moral crisis of this moment. We know who Donald Trump is. But the question is: Who are we?”

The key here, Booker went on to say, is “to deal with the poverty of empathy we have in our nation right now. The poverty of realizing that this is happening to my neighbor, that this fundamentally implicates me and endangers me.”

Is that what Shirley Jackson was hinting at in “The Lottery”? She left it up to the reader to come to their own conclusions, to take from the story what they would, whether that was to see themselves in the complacent villagers, to view it as a call to speak up when appropriate, or simply to enjoy a good story. In an introduction for The Art of the Short Story, in which “The Lottery” is anthologized, Jackson declines to explain any personal meaning:

“The idea came to me while I was pushing my daughter up the hill in her stroller—it was, as I say, a warm morning, and the hill was steep, and beside my daughter the stroller held the day’s groceries—and perhaps the effort of that last fifty yards up the hill put an edge to the story…”

While her daughter took her nap, Jackson put the story to paper. A few weeks later it came out in The New Yorker and changed her life forever.

As I say again and again on this website, fiction has the power to reveal truths than can lead to change. On the most fundamental level, it enlightens, makes us think. That may be enough. That may be everything. More than seventy years later, it’s worth a reread by anyone concerned about the current state of our country.

Although Jackson wrote many works of fiction, “The Lottery” is the story that most often comes to mind when her name is mentioned, or a canon of great short stories assembled. •

(Thank you to my granddaughter who suggested I take a fresh look at this story. She was right about its continuing relevancy.)