Franklin, Ruth. “The Lottery”: Letters. New Yorker. 25 June 2013
This article is more of a reader response criticism and it provides information on how other people who read “The Lottery” feel about it. This article was written by knowledgeable scholar, Ruth Franklin, who has written a biography of Shirley Jackson. According to Franklin, everyone who read the short story was either confused or just wanted to know more about why Jackson wrote this story. Franklin read letters written to Jackson after her story was first published in The New Yorker and Franklin’s article includes her own commentary on these letters. The letters were held in the Library of Congress. Once she read the letters and her response to each person in the article. In the article, Franklin uses the letters to back up her arguments about the story and how she felt that the story was based on the theme of man ’s and how brutality gives the story a twist at the end. Franklin uses a magazine that was issued when Shirley Jackson published “The Lottery” and was spoke with Mariam Friend, who took also notes on the letters about the short-story. This helped her a lot with her argument as well. The letters were to Jackson and the readers wanted to know more about the story and even her professor and how he was “stumped” by the story.
Nebeker, Helen E. “‘The Lottery’: Symbolic Tour De Force.” American Literature, vol. 46, no.
1, 1974, pp. 100–108. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2924129.
This article is written by Helen E. Nebeker and it was published by Duke University Press. Nebeker uses the reader response criticism in this article. This article uses a lot of other people opinion about the short-story. Nebeker uses: Studies in the Short story, Instructor’s Manual by Virgil Scott, Modern Short Stories; A Critical Anthology by Robert B. Heilman and Understanding Fiction by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Warren; all of these are from New York. She also relied heavily on “The Lottery” to back up her agreement. She talks about the symbolism in the short-story and how “hold the key to Jackson’s conclusive theme.” Nebeker also writes about the tradition of the short-story. She talks about the names and the meanings of the name. What is so significant about each name? She gives us details of each little thing in the story. She talks about how tradition never changes and that man will always follow an old pattern and man is trapped in this world from just wanting to explain and control the things that are going around him in the universe. Mostly, Nebeker concludes that this story is about the scapegoat of humanity and how innocent people are being punished. This is just a superstition that each person have and their different tradition.
Stark, Jack. "Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery.'" Censored Books: Critical Viewpoints. Ed. Nicholas J. Karolides, Lee Burress, and John M. Kean. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1993. Pp. 358-62.
Jack Stark’s section about “The Lottery” in Censored Books focuses on why schools are censoring the story, and why it is very foolish to do so. The debate about censorship starts due to the fact Jackson’s story contains acts of violence. However, Stark argues that this should not be a reason to censor since the incident of violence occurs at the very end, and the focus of the story is to concentrate “on violence’s social and psychological roots” (358). He also recalls that the violence is meant to be seen in an ironic light and not to be taken as an approval to such acts of terror. Stark explains the benefits of having young students read it, such as the role of tradition in human behavior, which is a topic “that teenagers can comprehend and have experienced” such as religious rituals or school traditions (359). This theme may teach readers to think about what the purpose of a tradition or ritual is and encourage critical thinking. He also writes that “The Lottery” can enlighten students about law, which presents a surreal example in which the law does not guarantee a citizen’s safety and can also threaten someone’s safety. Another reason why Jackson’s story should be on the curriculum is to develop maturation in readers since the themes cross over generations and explores the phenomenon of mob mentality. The lack of individuality in the story will also reach out to readers who are figuring out their own identities, as well as question many social norms.