Customer Reviews

Lottery

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Many people are familiar with the story "The Lottery," but it is just one of many incredible vignettes of life filling this collection. It is hard to understand today why "The Lottery" originally provoked such a strong reaction, yet it still packs a punch for first-time readers. While it does have aspects of horror, the remaining stories are basically literary. "Flower Garden" and "After You, My Dear Alphonse" deal with racism and would seem to be pretty bold statements for the time period (the book was published in 1948); the latter story seems particularly groundbreaking because of the unusual perspective it provides. "Charles" is a humorous yet illuminating look at the behavior of children, while "Afternoon in Linen" is an important statement on why children sometimes behave as they do. Jackson is at her best when describing the disenchanted adult. The helplessness of women is an important theme in many stories; many of the women described here feel helpless and subservient to their husbands, their neighbors, and their community. "Elizabeth" is a fairly long study of how one woman's wishes and dreams remain unfulfilled in later life. The housewife in "Got a Letter From Jimmy" is thoroughly exasperated by her husband's feelings, and since she cannot speak her mind to him, she is forced to fantasize about killing him. In "The Villager" a woman spontaneously chooses to become someone else entirely for a few minutes, and most of Jackson's heroines spend much time contemplating what could have been. In "Of Course," the fact that a new family has a few unorthodox views builds an unbreachable wall between brand-new neighbors. The women in these stories are always wondering what other people think about them and worrying about what others will say about them. Even when a group of women try to do something good to help the less fortunate, it backfires on them in "Come Dance With Me in Ireland." When a female character vacations with her husband in New York in "Pillar of Salt," she soon becomes "lost," afraid, and desperate to return home. "Colloquy" is the shortest story in the collection, but its protagonist speaks for most of Jackson's female characters when she asks whether she alone or the whole world has gone insane.

My favorite story here is "The Daemon Lover." Herein, Jackson offers one of the most poignant, touching looks at loneliness, desperation, and fragility I have ever read. In the story, we spend a day with the protagonist as she prepares for her wedding, having become engaged just the night before to a James Harris. It is a depressing yet beautiful story, and I actually rate it higher than "The Lottery." The character of James Harris actually flitters throughout several of these stories, a phantom of sorts haunting several of Jackson's more memorable female characters.

Jackson deals with very serious subjects, and the illumination provided by her unusual perspectives on life is vivid and poignant. When addressing racism, she shows how even an individual with the best of intentions and good will can still represent an unfortunate racist attitude. In speaking to morality and social values, she shows how hard it can be for an individual to go against tradition and the community to do what is right. She offers powerful insights on child (and adult) psychology. Even the couple of stories I did not really "get" offered insight into the living of life. Readers should not expect a book of horror stories when they pick up this book. The stories can be maudlin and even depressing, but they are philosophical, psychological, and sociological rather than creepy or spooky.

"The Lottery" is a powerful work of literature and the best short story I ever read. When first published in the "New Yorker" in 1948, it engendered an enormous amount of hate mail; some readers actually canceled their subscriptions. Although now commonly regarded as a masterpiece of short fiction, Jackson's macabre work is still so greatly abhorred by some contemporary readers that they have attempted to get it banned from their local libraries. Indeed, a relacement copy I donatated just quietly disappeared from mine. Why? The few readers I have polled were quick to label the story "terrible" but seemed strangely reluctant to pinpoint their objections; so I can only surmise. I believe the story makes people nervous because they perceive that the community in which the lottery was held is really not all too different from their own. I think Jackson drives home the point that we, too, live in a society rife with superstition and ignorance -- a culture in which ancient traditions are unquestioningly accepted and virtually anyone can suddenly find themselves chosen as a sacrificial offering to an unseen god. When readers see themselves in the role of the ill-fated Mrs. Hutchinson, besieged by a mindless mob of true-believers, they are justifiably terrified. Or could it be that some readers are troubled because they sense in themselves a strong impulse to pick up a stone?

Many people are familiar with the story "The Lottery," but it is just one of many incredible vignettes of life filling this collection. It is hard to understand today why "The Lottery" originally provoked such a strong reaction, yet it still packs a punch for first-time readers. While it does have aspects of horror, the remaining stories are basically literary. "Flower Garden" and "After You, My Dear Alphonse" deal with racism and would seem to be pretty bold statements for the time period (the book was published in 1948); the latter story seems particularly groundbreaking because of the unusual perspective it provides. "Charles" is a humorous yet illuminating look at the behavior of children, while "Afternoon in Linen" is an important statement on why children sometimes behave as they do. Jackson is at her best when describing the disenchanted adult. . The helplessness of women is an important theme in many stories; many of the women described here feel helpless and subservient to their husbands, their neighbors, and their community. "Elizabeth" is a fairly long study of how one woman's wishes and dreams remain unfulfilled in later life. The housewife in "Got a Letter From Jimmy" is thoroughly exasperated by her husband's feelings, and since she cannot speak her mind to him, she is forced to fantasize about killing him. In "The Villager" a woman spontaneously chooses to become someone else entirely for a few minutes, and most of Jackson's heroines spend much time contemplating what could have been. In "Of Course," the fact that a new family has a few unorthodox views builds an unbreachable wall between brand-new neighbors. The women in these stories are always wondering what other people think about them and worrying about what others will say about them. Even when a group of women try to do something good to help the less fortunate, it backfires on them in "Come Dance With Me in Ireland." When a female character vacations with her husband in New York in "Pillar of Salt," she soon becomes "lost," afraid, and desperate to return home. "Colloquy" is the shortest story in the collection, but its protagonist speaks for most of Jackson's female characters when she asks whether she alone or the whole world has gone insane.

My favorite story here is "The Daemon Lover." Herein, Jackson offers one of the most poignant, touching looks at loneliness, desperation, and fragility I have ever read. In the story, we spend a day with the protagonist as she prepares for her wedding, having become engaged just the night before to a James Harris. It is a depressing yet beautiful story, and I actually rate it higher than "The Lottery." The character of James Harris actually flitters throughout several of these stories, a phantom of sorts haunting several of Jackson's more memorable female characters.

Jackson deals with very serious subjects, and the illumination provided by her unusual perspectives on life is vivid and poignant. When addressing racism, she shows how even an individual with the best of intentions and good will can still represent an unfortunate racist attitude. In speaking to morality and social values, she shows how hard it can be for an individual to go against tradition and the community to do what is right. She offers powerful insights on child (and adult) psychology. Even the couple of stories I did not really "get" offered insight into the living of life. Readers should not expect a book of horror stories when they pick up this book. The stories can be maudlin and even depressing, but they are philosophical, psychological, and sociological rather than creepy or spooky.

If you've never read "The Lottery," you're wasting valuable time reading this review. Go buy the book and read it instead. If you have read "The Lottery," then odds are you already appreciate this dark, brilliant, horrific little story. It's one of the greatest horror stories ever written, and it's one of my favorites of all time to teach, as well. My students were all shocked and horrified by the story (not least by the fact that I would give them something that so offended them), but by the end of the semester, they came to love the story. The set-up is brilliant, and the twist ending is perfect: brutal, shocking, and short. Other reviewers have commented on the story's excellence for teaching things like the evil of tradition; it's also an excellent way to teach how ordinary people could become involved in something like the Nazi death camps.

The rest of the stories in the collection are uniformly excellent, as well, although I would recommend saving "The Lottery" for last. It's by far the most horrific in the collection, but Jackson's satire can be just as brutal as her horror, and there is more than a little of the horror of everyday life sprinkled throughout the rest of these tales. A must-buy!

Despite writing a handful of excellent gothic horror novels, including The Haunting of Hill House (just made into a film for the second time), Shirley Jackson seems destined to be best remembered for her great short story The Lottery. Originally published in The New Yorker in 1948, and a a staple of High School English classes ever since, it elicited some of the most spirited response in the history of that dowdy weekly. The story is a stunning indictment of something but is sufficiently ambiguous that many different individuals and groups were able to take personal offense at its implications.

It would seem to me though, that there is a pretty conventional way of reading it; one that both touches upon a basic human truth and offers fairly little offense to anyone. Take it at relative face value and the Lottery represents any human institution which is allowed to continue unchallenged and unconsidered until it becomes a destructive, rather than a constructive, force in men's lives.. After all, in the story, the reasons for holding the Lottery are long forgotten, other than the platitudinous "Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon". And the rituals connected to it, other than the making of participant lists, the use of the old ballot box and the swearing in, have mostly fallen by the wayside. All that really remains is a rigid adherence to a hoary tradition.

Now folks can, of course, freight it with specific signifigances--read the whole thing as an attack on capitalism or religion or small town conformity or agrarian culture or any of a number of different things. But it seems to me that the most straightforward reading allows it to impact on all of those things. Simply put, the fact that something has been done a certain way for a really long time does not necessarily justify its continuance.

If this powerfully disturbing story seems like too heavy a cudgel to wield to make such a self evident, unnuanced point, let's not underestimate how difficult it is to teach people anything. After all, Plato has maintained the title of world's greatest philosopher for a few thousand years now on the basis of "Know thyself". So, why shouldn't Shirley grab a spot in the limelight for herself with a story that admonishes us to examine our civic rituals, especially since she couched her admonition in a great American gothic horror tale, which still retains its visceral power to shock us.

GRADE: A

I read The Lottery in fifth grade and was also shown the short movie. That was almost 20 years ago and I still haven't forgotten it! I remembered details from that movie better than some recent movies I've seen or stories I've read. I just reread The Lottery a few days ago and it still gave me chills. I was too young the first time to appreciate the story and the meaning behind it. I highly recommend it-it will last a lifetime! (I was wondering if anyone else ever saw the movie-the OLD movie, not the recent remake).

Jackson is a master at creating moods that are, at the same time, subtle and difficult to shake--even long after you've put the book down. The storytelling here is gripping, and the characters are ones you won't soon forget.

This story by Shirley Jackson is, as in the title of my review, disturbing yet enticing. It begins with a description of the perfection of this summer day in this small town, and proceeds to a thorough description of a stack of stones that the children prepare. All of the people in the town gather in this open area and wait for the lottery to commence. Then the story proceeds to detail the fact that things are being forgotten as time passes but the people still hold on viciously to their old traditions, even keeping the old black lottery box though it is worn down and hardly good for use. The reader is introduced to only one person and that is Mrs. Hutchinson who arrived late to the lottery and that though she tries to laugh off their present situation, even the laughter her friends and she emit is quiet. The tension mounts as the head of each household must go up and pick from the black box, everyone nervous. From the very beginning the reader feels the strangeness of this book and the suspense about what this lottery really is until the very end. The gravity of the situation that Mrs. Hutchinson, Tessie, as she is called, is in by choosing the slip of paper with the black spot on it is only realized by Tessie's intejections of "It's not fair." When the people of the town all pick up the stones and stone Tessie, they do so with the most casuality, even stopping to choose the perfect stones to throw. This story, to be understood fully, must be read at least twice for the second time, the subtle hints of the coming event becomes quite clear: the children stacking the stones and choosing the smoothest ones, the small population, the nervousness of the crowd. This demented tradition of stoning a single person of the town is done in order to ensure a good harvest in the coming summer and that person is the sacrifice. Jackson excellently portrays the downside of traditions in this short story as well as the accepting nature of human beings to what has always been done. This short story was not enjoyable, but a very interesting read and I would recommend it to anyone who has the capability to stomach meaning in its entirety.

I read the short story of the Lottery when I was a Freshman. I re-read it about three days ago, and it still gives me the creeps. What a briliant story. I was totally caught by surprise by the ending. For those of you who think it was demented. You just don't understand what she's getting at. She talking about society and the rituals we all perform no matter how stupid or rediculous they seem, we still do them. Masterfully written. I enjoyed it to the very end!!!

When Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery" was first published in the New Yorker in 1948 - post-war readers were horrified. Hundreds of them canceled their subscriptions and dozens more wrote scathing letters of indictment to the editors.

Mild-mannered Shirley Jackson had just ripped through the veneer of Small Town, USA and exposed the maggot-laden underbelly. Here Jackson gives us a portrait of an America nobody in 1948 was willing to see - not after the ticker-tape parades celebrating the defeat of the Nazis and Japanese. We were the heroes, after all, the good guys.

Nobody wanted to look into the mirror and see the dull, narrow-minded conformity hiding in plain sight on Main Street. But such was the well-mannered terror of Jackson's story. Jackson's premise - that good, hard-working folks would murder a neighbor in a barbaric ritual -- was so horrifying that many readers simply couldn't handle it.

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle a few months after "The Lottery" was published, Jackson said: "Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives."

Jackson's tale reads like a bland "day-in-the-life" story in a rather ordinary New England town. That's because Jackson lulls the reader into believing that herein lies an innocent story and not something so horribly twisted they will be cringing by the time they read the last paragraph. Notice in the first paragraph how Jackson uses long sentences to help put the reader at easy and mimic the easy rambling style of an old Yankee narrator:

"The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flower were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock; in some town there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to started on June 2nd, but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so 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."

The story follows this pattern to the end. The reader feels like they have stepped into a small village and this lottery they are talking about is something like the square dances and church suppers that are held every Saturday night at the town hall. There's Old Man Warner complaining that the lottery "ain't what it used to be!" Dabnabit!

Everyone is so damn polite. Mr. Summers himself, running a bit late, declares, "Little late today, folks!" There's Mrs. Hutchinson so busy washing dishes that heck she completely forgot what day it was. "Thought my old man was out back stacking wood," she tells Mrs. Delacroix. "And then I looked out the window and the kids was gone, and then I remembered it was the twenty-seventh and came a-running."

She should have kept running.

There are sign posts along the way and it's enough to infuse the reader with a growing sense of unease. There's the boy, Bobby Martin, stuffing his pockets with stones and the other boys "selecting the smoothest and roundest stones." There's the dreaded black box Mr. Summers carries into the square that causes a murmur in the crowd. There's the trepidation roiling through the crowd just before the drawing (strangely, the reader thinks, the prospect of winning this lottery doesn't seem to make folks happy).

The reader's hackles begin to rise when Mr. Adams and Old Man Warner begin to talk about other villages giving up the lottery. That nonsense gets Old Man Warner ranting about young folks and breaking tradition.

"`Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about `Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery,' he added petulantly. `Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everyone.'
`Some places have already quit lotteries,' Mr. Adams said.
`Nothing but trouble in that,' Old Man Warner said stoutly. `Pack of young fools.'"

Now the reader knows something is wrong, but not how wrong.

By the time Mr. Summers calls for everyone to be quick about it and they gather up the stones - giving Mrs. Hutchinson's toddler boy a rock to throw at his mother - and monstrously murdering her by stoning, the reader is slack jawed. You can feel the chill running down your spine - even after repeated readings.

That's the power Jackson displays here. "The Lottery" is so good, so intensely disturbing that it still has the ability to shock even today.

Enjoy literate blather? Then head over to the Dark Party Review to visit Ms. Jackson and other great writers. [..]