Peter Lloyd
Jim Andrzejeweski
English Composition 102 Sect. 83
01/28/2009
Critical Essay on Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery “The Lottery” is shocking and horrible. A woman, (Mrs. Hutchins,) is selected and stoned to death by her friends and family because they believe her death will ensure a bountiful harvest. Jackson’s writing, character buildup, and imagery in the story are a thing of beauty. By use of her more than apparent skill as a writer, Jackson exposes a poignant and disturbing look into the darker side of humanity. Jackson uses adjectives like sunny, fresh, and full to describe the beauty of the summer’s day on which this “lottery” is being held; but all is not well in the small rural village. Whole paragraphs describe the children, the townsfolk and the general air of importance that surrounds the event. The black box that the townspeople draw tickets out of, gets stored in various different shops during the years time between each event; almost as if no one wants to accept full responsibility for it. There is also a disturbing undertone of “this is the way it has always been” “we have always had a lottery,” almost as if most of the town was trying to justify the performing of the lottery. The lotteries black wooden box is transformed into an ominous symbolic tool. Mrs. Hutchinson is introduced and woven superbly into the plot until her untimely demise for agriculture. In the lottery, we can see just how far a society will go so that it can prosper. Of course we are shocked and repulsed by the premise that someone must be sacrificed so that a good harvest can be had, but is it really that different from what happens in our society? Both the Mayans and Aztecs believed that by sacrificing people would bring a better crop, in fact; it was a very large part of their respective religions. How many times has our society been at war to preserve our prosperity, our way of life? Jackson is making a statement about our society and indeed our humanity; she is exposing our dark underbelly, our brute animal nature. “The Lottery” as a story is a success because each and every one of us has the capacity to do what happened in this story, it touches a common nerve. The lottery is a very well written and insightful bit of sarcastic analysis of the human condition “Oh no” “I could never kill anyone” you might say,” “surely we as a society are above this baser sort of behavior”. Are we? Do we as a society think we are beyond behaving like this because we are so advanced with our SUV’s and our cell phones and our four-dollar Mochachino’s from Starbucks. Don’t be so sure. Try going without food or water for a couple of days and see how you might feel about your neighbor who has the only bit of food and water left in your reachable vicinity, Suppose someone is an immediate threat to not only you, but your loved ones survival. What kind of person would you become? What depths of depravity would you sink to? Could you, would you, pick up a stone then? Talk to a veteran sometime about the things they had to do in order to survive say the beaches of Normandy or the jungle along the Ho Chi Min Trail in Vietnam. I doubt that they will fully recount all of the things they had to do, but look into their eyes. You can see the pain, the regret, and the torment. You might also be able to see that spark of animal instinct that Jackson so beautifully shows us here at the very end of the lottery when the crowd was stoning poor Mrs. Hutchins. Supposedly Shirley Jackson wrote this short story after she had had a bad day and was a little stressed out. If this is the kind of story she writes when she is stressed out well, I would be very afraid to read something she had written when she was really angry. The lottery is a very well written and insightful bit of sarcastic analysis of the human condition and I will gladly keep it on hand for future reading.