Today we’re reading one of the most well-known American short stories of the 20th century, Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’. You can read it (or reread it) here. I know a few people who are experts on the work of Shirley Jackson (you can even catch a few of their Shirley Jackson classes with Romancing the Gothic here and here) and I’m very aware of my lack of ability to add anything new to the conversation. It’s a story that I, and many others, have read and reread, it’s been taught and discussed hundreds of thousands of times. What strikes me in reading it is its simplicity of style and the effectiveness of its ending no matter how many times you read it. Indeed, after the first time of reading, when you reread with no twist left to unturn, has just as great an impact. You see the horror coming, you see it ritualised and mundane, you can do nothing to stop it and when it comes, it comes with an inevitability that, against your will, aligns you with the villagers who have carried on the same tradition, have accepted the same horror, have made it a matter of inevitability from year to year.
I focused on a couple of little things this year. Old Man Warner, set in his ways and decrying the new generation and their new-fangled distaste for tradition. He offers no reason but ‘the way things are done’, however, and there are so many details of how the ritual has already changed over the years. Forms and ceremonies have been left off and forgotten. The central act is saved but almost everything that gave it a veneer of meaning have been lost and yet Warner clings to the illusion of meaning on no greater grounds than simply ‘that’s the way of things’. The second thing I fixed on on this reading was Mrs. Delacroix’s choice of a stone she could lift with two hands. Early in the story she seems to be particularly friendly with Tessie. Is the large stone an attempted act of mercy? Or is it dedication to tradition? What do you think?
Romancing the Gothic 