The Lottery discussion

Shirley Jackson was an American writer born in California in 1916. She was famous for her horror, and mystery writing, most notably her 1948 short story “The Lottery”. “The Lottery” is a story about a seemingly normal American small town that takes pride in its traditions. As the story progresses, however, readers find out that the largest tradition in the town, the lottery, is far from normal, and involves stoning an innocent citizen to death. Jackson published this story just three years after the end of World War Two, and at the beginning of the red scare, and peak anti-communist paranoia. It is highly possible that this story was meant to act as a warning against mob driven hysteria that was so prevalent at that time. Many readers were not happy with this message and some even took it as pro communist. Jackson even received hate mail as a result of this. I enjoyed how Jackson created a strong unassuming, familiar mood that relaxes readers before revealing the secrets of the tradition. This helped create even more shock in the readers minds and further emphasized the craziness of the tradition, and the theme of the story. I do wish however, Shirley Jackson used more in depth imagery while describing the setting. While she does paint a good picture of the town in readers' minds, I think she could have been more detailed in her descriptions of the town's citizens, and cultures. While I do understand that this was a short story and she likely needed to keep her word count relatively low, I still think she could have been more descriptive to immerse readers further into the town.

Work Cited
The PostWar Red Scare - The Bill of Rights Institute.org


Shirley Jackson - Biography.com