In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” there is a constant struggle for the characters to make the ritual murder of a member of their town a familiar act, one which they can disconnect themselves and their feelings from while justifying murder for the common good of the village. This process of distancing themselves not only tries to make the lottery a normal and familiar act, it also is turned in to a tool that forces a better work ethic and is a mirroring of the rituals of the primitive man. The lottery acts only as a scare tactic and is used by the high class members of the town to fool the working middleclass in to believing that efforts in their job as well as their economic accomplishments will lead to their safety in the lottery selection. The lottery essentially becomes a nostalgic act for the townspeople, not only because they partake in it annually, but also because they are drawing on a collective nostalgic act of the primitive ritualistic murder and the tendencies of the human race to be savage.
The story opens with a “deadpan” description of the setting and inserts bluntly, without seeming strange, the mention of the lottery and then ends with the conclusion that the villagers would be home in time to eat their dinners. From this first paragraph the reader gets a strange feeling about the lottery, even though they do not know what it is exactly. The narrative continues from the issue of the lottery and talks about normal events that make the reader feel that the lottery is not anything out of the ordinary. This process of guising the strange within the normal is something that occurs throughout the story and is used as a tool to make the reader as comfortable with “the strange” as the characters in the story are.
When the people begin to gather in the center of town they are described as partaking in generally normal activities, “The children assembled first…their talk was still of the classroom and teacher…” (Jackson 702). This does not appear odd to the reader, but the reader does notice that there is something slightly off by the end of the second paragraph where it says: “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example…” (Jackson 702). Later on in the story it becomes clear that they were collecting the stones to throw them at the lottery’s “winner,” and this becomes even more disturbing for then reader. When the reader looks back on the beginning of the story and sees how the children are not affected by the killing of a townsperson, they see the disturbing and twisted version of what, for the town, is a familiar annual ritual. None of the characters show a humane or moral duty towards the person who is sacrificed, which further displays to the reader that the killing has desensitized the people and moved from the territory of “the strange” in to “the familiar.”
In the third paragraph the men are introduced in to the story when they gather in the town’s center for the lottery. They begin talking amongst themselves, “…speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes…” (Jackson 702). This quote displays how the historic reason for a sacrificial ritual has changed in to something drastically different for the people of this modern town. Helen Nebeker talks about this juxtaposition in her article, “The Lottery”: Symbolic Tour De Force, she states: “The reader sees then men gather, talking of planting and rain (the central issues of ancient propitiatory rites), tractors and taxes (those modern additions to the concerns of man).” (Nebeker 103). What she is pointing out is that the ritual of sacrifice has transformed in to something that answers and controls the modern fears of the townspeople. Their motivations lay in capitalistic gain rather than in the basic need for good weather to grow food to survive. They are not concerned with the ability to grow a healthy crop, but rather to receive a blessing for their capitalistic labors.
Peter Kosenko talks about the economic motivations of the people in his article “A Reading of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”” where he states that
“…the lottery is an ideological mechanism. It serves to reinforce the village’s hierarchical social order by instilling the villages with an unconscious fear that if they resist this order they might be selected in the next lottery…this social order and ideology are essentially capitalist.” (Kosenko 27).
This quote discusses how the villagers react to not only the lottery, but also to the higher class in their village. Mr. Summers, Mr. Graves, and Mr. Martin are the most important (economically) in the village; therefore they are the most powerful with in their society. The fact that these men run the lottery each year makes the villagers transfer the power they feel that the lottery has to the men who run it.
The idea of the lottery taking place in a more modern society also makes the reader think about the basic needs and tendencies of the human race. We can look back to the beginning of the ritual and see that within this context the primitive man is viewed as a savage creature, one who would create a ritual of murder to pay homage to god (s). Nebeker states that the lottery is “…pointing out its obvious comment on the innate savagery of man lurking beneath his civilized trappings.” (Nebeker 100), which comments on the fact that underneath each of the members of the civilized and modern town is a savage primitive man who is looking to fulfill his primal needs of survival, one who would use a ritual of murder in order to feel that he had more control over his circumstances.
This idea of the primitive man becomes important when trying to find the significance of nostalgia within the story. Nostalgia plays a slightly different role in “The Lottery” than it did in other stories we have read throughout the semester. Nostalgia becomes not only a link for the characters to connect to their past, but also a link to the past of the human race, our collective past. The lottery itself is a nostalgic ritual because it draws upon hundreds of thousands of years of human involvement in sacrificial rituals and the belief that bloodshed will produce prosperous conditions for their people.
The second connection that the lottery has to the idea of making “the strange” seem like “the normal” is the story’s ability to do just that, make the idea of a lottery for murder seem as if it is a completely normal act. Kosenko talks about how the lottery is “a careful analysis of the abundance of social detail that links the lottery to the ordinary social practices of the village.” (Kosenko 27). Through Jackson’s narrative, the reader stays under the assumption that nothing strange is occurring. Even the more brutal and savage aspects of the murder are portrayed as emotionless mundane actions, like when Mr. Summers states, “All right, folks…Let’s finish quickly.” (Jackson 708) when referring to the killing of Mrs. Hutchinson. There is no heightened emotion from the villagers, and barely any from Mrs. Hutchinson herself who does not put up much of a fight when the others begin to attack her.
The story displays how there is a nostalgic connection to the ritual of sacrifice which would make it (the strange) seem familiar to the townspeople in the story. Motivated by economic gain and alleviation of mental uneasiness the characters comply with the disturbing ritualistic murder of one of the townspeople. This practice of ritualistic sacrificial murder can be traced back to the beginning of the human race, but seems especially shocking considering that the story takes place in a more modern setting. People of the “modern” day are not supposed to be savages who will kill one of their own in order for the gain of their town, and the more disturbing fact is that they are all alright with the idea of this murder, this is exactly what makes the story so affective, it’s ability to take characters who seem strange to the reader and make them seem completely normal.
WORKS CITED
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” The Story and It’s Writer. Ann Charters. Boston, MA. Bedford/St. Martin. 702-708.
Kosenko, Peter. “A Reading of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.”” New Orleans Review. Vol. 12, No. 1. (Spring 1985), 27-32.
Nebeker, Helen E. “The Lottery”: Symbolic Tour de Force.” American Literature. Vol. 46, No 1. (Mar. 1974), 100-108.
