By Hannah Cox
Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery” is a timeless short story that centers on an annual small-town tradition: a lottery that determines which member of their town will be stoned to death by the community. This ritual is shocking when given the setting. Such strong depictions of violence are never expected in a place identical to any small town in America. Why do they stone one of their own villagers every year? There is no valid reason except superstition. Their old village saying, “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon”, implies the origin of the ritual: mandating sacrifice in hopes for good crops. There is no denying this is entirely irrational, however, that is the point. Jackson's “The Lottery” parodies the real irrational societies we live in, especially America's beliefs and deeply flawed infrastructures. By examining the ritual of the lottery, who controls it, the villager's behavior, and why Tessie Hutchinson was selected to be executed, there is valid evidence that “The Lottery” is a representation of America's unstable socio-political state.
Everyone participates in the lottery, even those who control it. But who controls it, and why do they continue to enforce such a meaningless policy? First there is Mr. Summers, the mayor, owner of the town's most profitable company, and “official” of the lottery. Second in command is the postmaster Mr. Graves, and the third most powerful is Mr. Martin, the owner of the town grocery. These three men are the figures of leadership in this village, as well as the individuals with the most profits. There is no coincidence that those who have the economic advantage over the rest of the community ended up in charge. This is a classic example of an oligarchical society much like America, where the wealthy minority controls the majority. But what is the relationship between the most powerful man in town, Mr. Summers, and his role as conductor of the lottery? Critic Peter Kosenko writes “At the very moment when the lottery's victim is revealed, Jackson appends a subordinate clause in which we see the blackness (evil) of Mr. Summers' (coal) business being transferred to the black dot on the lottery slip,” connecting Mr. Summers' economical advantage to the evil that is classified as capitalism (28). A hierarchy overrules the lottery due to the capitalist nature of the lottery’s function.
One reason why social hierarchy holds control over the village is because the lottery reinforces it by using fear tactics. This fear creates a superstitious ideology among the villagers that if they are not productive or useful to the village, they will be selected as punishment. After the first drawing, they ask each other if the Dunbars or Watsons were chosen. Mr. Dunbar broke his leg, and the father of the Watson family was the lottery’s victim the previous year. The village subconsciously elects the least productive members of their community. Thus, the lottery also functions as a motivation to keep the villagers working. Old Man Warner, a character that trusts in the lottery, believes that those who have quit the ritual will be “wanting to go back living in caves, nobody work anymore,” then boasts about participating in the lottery for the seventy-seventh year. This boast is not derived from luck, but from the character's belief that he continuously preserves immunity from selection by his devotion to work hard. This illusion that a strong work ethic will protect them from selection distracts the villagers from realizing the lottery functions to keep divisions of labor in place. The lottery is used to channel the anger and violence towards each other, all victims of the hierarchical structure, to recede the villager's subconscious dissatisfaction to the social order they live in. In other words, this tradition is conducted to cease resistance so those in charge may remain in power. The lottery disguises itself as a democracy by promoting the idea of equal chance, however, it is inherently keeping everyone in their place, and nothing changes. This ideology is identical to the functionalities of capitalist labor where the rich persuade those in lower job divisions that the enemy is each other rather than placing blame onto those in higher positions.
There is a blatant amount of blind faith in the lottery’s tradition, as well as faith in those who control it. The lottery began on the grounds of outdated superstitious beliefs, yet they keep up the tradition with no questions asked, despite outside villages removing the tradition and adapting to change. These villages are depicted as a “pack of crazy fools” by the character who has been around for the lottery the longest, Old Man Warner, insinuating that change is wrong, except he never elaborates on why. This blind reliance on a tradition with dangerously high risks at stake may reflect the mindless assurance Americans have on their own beliefs and traditions, including trust in authoritative figures.
Alongside irrational trust, the mindset of denial and hypocrisy shows through the villager's behavior towards the lottery. As the town gathers for the annual ritual, many socialize with indifference to the event, despite the evident risk against them all. The villagers mingle amongst each other as if it were like any other day, “speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes” and “exchanging bits of gossip.” Tessie Hutchinson even shows up to the event late, claiming she “clearly forgot what day it was” as if it were nothing to anticipate. There is an unsettling aura of denial surrounding the ritual, such as the line “it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner,” yet not all of the villagers are coming home. The villagers speak of the lottery as if its a nuisance to their daily routine rather than a threat to their life, such as when Mr. Summers says they should start and get it over with “so's we can go back to work.” This behavior speaks volumes on their mindset of the lottery: “it won't happen to me, it will always happen to someone else.”
This aura of denial is not unordinary considering this was published merely several years after World War II. Critic Edna Bogert comments “what the villagers in Shirley Jackson’s story did was to go along with a tradition that required the murder of a member of the community each year. What the citizens of Germany did a few decades ago was to go along with a leader whose expressed goal was the extermination of a group of people,” connecting the blind ideologies between the two tragedies, one fiction, and one reality (47). Many Americans after World War II strongly believed that something as sinister as the holocaust could not happen here. Using a setting that looks like an American town is important because it symbolizes the denial and hypocrisy American citizens hold on victims of unjust violence. There is the mentality that “it could never happen here,” but Jackson is challenging this outlook. Jay A. Yarmove writes that “The Lottery” proves that “custom and law, when sanctioned by a selfish, unthinking populace, can bring an otherwise democratic and seemingly just society to the brink of paganism,” paganism in this context implying violence brought forth due to irrational superstitions (245).
There remains the question of why Jackson chose to use Tessie Hutchinson as the village's scapegoat. Although her character received little to no development, she is still void of wrongdoing. Using Tessie, an ordinary housewife that held no resentment against the lottery (until her husband drew the marked slip), displays a recurrent act of injustice against victims of arbitrary selection. This tactic of arbitrary blame was put to use on the Jewish community in World War II. This phenomenon continues to occur seventy years after this story was published in 1948. In 2017, there was a 17 percent spike in hate crimes in the United States due to blame placed on religious groups and minorities by a partisan administration, and that number continues to grow. Similar to “The Lottery,” American working-class citizens remain in their place due to fear tactics derived from the hierarchy: The wealthy 2 percent, those in control, blame arbitrary groups and minorities for the problems that come from those with the economic advantage in hopes that they will remain in power. It is a perpetual cycle that was made possible due to the corruption birthed from capitalism.
There are multiple heavy themes in this dystopian tale that mirror the functions of a capitalist society, blind trust in tradition/authority, and the tragedy of arbitrary blame. Jackson’s story may seem pessimistic; however, I see it as a warning of destruction due to the ideological method of capitalism: if communities do not adapt to change or think critically about the sociopolitical structures in place, victims of the “scapegoat” will continue to suffer. “The Lottery” is not all doom and gloom, it offers a sliver of hope when the townsfolk discuss the other villages that removed the lottery from their society, or were in the process of doing so. Change is possible, but only if the members of unjust societies are willing to resist against the systematic constraints in place.
Works Cited
Bogert, Edna. “Censorship and ‘The Lottery.’” The English Journal, vol. 74, no. 1, 1985, pp. 45–47. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/816508.
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” The New Yorker, 1948, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/06/26/the-lottery
Kosenko, Peter. "A Marxist/Feminist Reading of Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery.'" New Orleans Review 12.1 (1985): 27-32.
Yarmove, Jay A. "Jackson's 'The Lottery.'" The Explicator 52 (1994): 242-45.
“2017 Hate Crime Statistics Released.” FBI, U.S Department of Justice, 13 Nov. 2018, www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2017-hate-crime-statistics-released-111318.