The Lottery by Shirley Jackson - Short Story Summary, Analysis, Review

Is Shirley Jackson's The Lottery America's Greatest Short Story?
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[@TheCodeXCantina]

Shirley Jackson Playlist: kzbin.info/www/bejne/d6XRk4Cnp7qqic0

[@Sorcerers_Apprentice]

Another issue in this story I don't see discussed often is the "Just World Fallacy", leading to a reluctance to question unjust cultural and power structures. Some characters mention other towns ending their lottery tradition, viewing it as a bad thing. Tessie goes along with the ritual and doesn't object until the system turns on her, only then does she start to cry that "it's not fair".

[@TheCodeXCantina]

For sure it's in there! Very cool

[@davidarmstrong1617]

FYI, "Warner" means "army guard" or "old guard", which is very symbolic of Warner's nature, as he wants to preserve the tradition and protect the town from any meaningful change.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

👍

[@kidmarine7329]

This is about as perfect a short story there is.

[@mckenzieserenity]

Hey there! I love your videos, and wanted to raise a point in response to your mentioning that Tessie backs down very easily as soon as any pressure is placed on her. Tessie is only ever a vocal opponent of her own death, yes. But I was wondering if you guys have looked at Mrs. Dunbar much in this story. She is the only character who does make active (if small) rebellions against the process. She draws instead of allowing her son to do so, and she sends him home to tell her husband the results (both of which remove him from participation); she also only picks up "small stones" and claims she cannot run to keep up with Mrs. Delacroix, trying to avoid participating as much as possible and also giving herself the out that if she does have to participate, her stones will surely not do any significant harm (esp. compared to Mrs. Delacroix's massive stone). Just some more food for thought

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Thanks for sharing!!

[@TheDropOfTheDay]

That's really interesting!

[@vincewillenbring9985]

That's an interesting point that I hadn't thought of. I also think you can infer from what's given a backstory about the Watson boy. I believe his nervousness and awkwardness during the lottery, in addition to the crowd's support of him, is attributable to his father being a previous victim of the lottery. He is forced to draw for the family now because his dad is dead, and he is visibly shaken because he could be suffering a sort of PTSD after watching his dad get executed during a previous lottery ceremony. The crowd knows this and are showing him extra support because they realize this is particularly difficult for him.

[@Fuubarr]

Happy I stumbled upon this channel.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Welcome aboard!

[@vincewillenbring9985]

I wish Shirley Jackson had written a sequel to The Lottery entitled Fixing the Lottery. In this story, the townspeople decide to rig the lottery, and everyone is in on it...except Old Man Warner. All of the slips of paper are marked with the dot. When everyone who chooses a folded piece of paper opens it up at the same time, they lie and say things like "No dot here. Do you have a dot? No? Who has it...Old Man Warner? You have it? That's too bad. It looks like your luck has finally run out, old man." And because he doesn't seem to have a wife or kids, they can immediately mark him as the sacrifice and start pelting the ornery old cuss. Afterward, they could make a proclamation that because of their underhanded plot, they have tarnished the lottery irreparably. It is forever canceled and instead they'll hold a town picnic every year on June 27th. A dark comedy to be sure, but with a happier ending.

[@peach8440]

Wow you guys are fantastic wish more people knew of this channel

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Thank you!

[@BookishTexan]

Well done gentlemen. Read this (like most people my age) around the 8th grade and man did it have an impact.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Nice. Was High School for me if memory serves me correctly (it usually does not). This has inspired me for a new question on a new tag video I'm cooking up for Krypto's birthday this year.

[@eskulmo]

10/10...I love this story

[@danielhainline8882]

I hope you filmed this on Dec. 14 to celebrate Shirley's birthday!

[@martinoconnor3020]

Some good analysis here. Some analysis that is a little off, too, I think. For example, in 1948 when this story was written, I don't think many people viewed the coal industry as a symbol of waste. Instead, I think Mr. Summers is one of the many examples of the "banality of evil" that are present in this story - a respected, jovial businessman in charge of what is essentially an evil ritual. Similarly, I disagree with the observation that the people of the town took part in a rite that "they knew" was evil simply for the sake of maintaining tradition. What really happened was much more insidious. The notion of tradition "laundered" the evil from the act of murdering one of their neighbors. In other words, the townsfolk DIDN'T KNOW that what they were doing was evil (children were allowed and encouraged to take part...a neighbor enthusiastically handed a stone to little Davey Hutchinson so that he could take part in the killing of his own mother), because this was simply something they had always done. In their minds, gathering for the Lottery every June 27th was no more evil than attending Christmas Eve service every December 24th. Even Tessie had no problem with what was happening, until she realized that it was (at first) her family, and then (ultimately) she who would be facing death. Only in the end did she realize that the ritual "wasn't fair," and "wasn't right," but her insights came too late.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Thanks for chiming in, Martin. You're welcome to disagree on whatever you'd like and we'd encourage presenting your analysis however you'd like. I like where you're going but might push you further on some of your angles. Small detour as I'm not sure what to say about your coal comment. I'm not sure where you're from, but in the US there were early 20th-century coal strikes, a severe drop from 1945-1950 (of like 33% don't quote me) of coal usage, and petroleum and natural gas shot up in popularity as she wrote this. Did she want to represent this? Well, maybe some people may think so. Just to defend that angle, while early film would push the coal or railway baron as the big-bad person, it could be argued to be capitalism or opportunism for whatever takes over from there of course of the businessman like banker or real estate etc. I noticed you already quoted Mr. Summers as being the businessman. I can see the angle where you are saying he was "just doing his job" but that sounds like the Nuremberg problem which I didn't particularly care for personally when we were talking about this one. I love what you're talking about with laundering the guilt. I hear that usually talked about from an individuality vs group membership perspective where people have less sense of guilt as a group (legal recourse too) than when acting as an individual. I think that's a great angle to discuss. Careful with townsfolk "didn't know." That's a hot topic, sounds like you're going back to the Nuremberg defense. People know killing is universally wrong. It's just maybe not acknowledge or laundered guilt as you said. Again, write your angle how you want. If you're doing it for a class or presenting it for others I'd just warn you to think through how it's presented as not everyone agrees "I'm just doing my job" is a valid defense or cleansing universal morality decisions. If you think it's a critique on with that last line, make sure flesh out that angle well. Is she really learning it? Is she finally facing the truth she had hidden? Any other supporting points in the story to help back that up? Good stuff, this is what literature is all about is discussion. :D

[@TheDropOfTheDay]

@@TheCodeXCantina This is such a neat back and forth.

[@QuestLegacy]

The themes of this book are all explored really well also in the KZbin series by VSauce called "Mind Field" where they take things like The Trolley Experiment and many other types of studies and explores them more. I really love that series.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

I'll check it out!

[@deanie3824]

I love this Short Story series you guys are doing! I'm trying to read along afterward and am catching up. Since you mentioned The Hunger Games, it interesting to think that The Lottery seems almost more bizarre. I can suspend my disbelief when reading an outlandish dystopia and accept it, but to accept a very similar reality set in a small town is always worse. You don't want it to be true. Just like you don't want to believe the results of the Milgram Experiment.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Deanie yeah. This story didn’t really have a central conceit for disbelief and was so happy to start. It would be really interesting to be a fly on the wall during a 50s household reading this story to hear them talk about how it impacted them. You rock for reading along.

[@ChristyLuisDostoevskyinSpace]

Great breakdown! It makes me want to dive back into literary theory! I read The Lottery last night so I could watch your video 😁 I didn't initially notice all the allusions you mentioned and wasn't aware of Shirley Jackson's history. (Hearing the biographical context adds some meaning to "we have always lived in the castle," as well.) Thank you for pointing them out. I'm not sure if it was the Milgram Shock Experiment specifically, but I do remember watching footage from something like it: the authority kept saying that the shock could not kill anyone. The person receiving shocks (just a recorded voice) would say they were getting pains in their chest. The person administering the shocks would have to decide who to listen to 😬 Women were far more likely to administer the shocks, contrary to the original hypothesis. Interesting and creepy stuff! I'll have to check out more about this experiment. LOVES this story. I think my tip top fave is "The Lame Shall Enter First" by Flannery O'Connor.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Haven’t read that one. Will have to check it out. I really want to show Krypto “The River” by her cause I think he likes the dark stuff 😂

[@ChristyLuisDostoevskyinSpace]

@@TheCodeXCantina Ooh, I haven't read that one yet! Definitely will read. Looking forward to your next vid!

[@lovelyjabree]

I agree a good 8 for the short story, but great analysis

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Thanks so much

[@anenthusiasticreader]

Great work here. I've always loved this story. I think if you changed the purpose, it wouldn't work as well. 9.5 for me, too. Did you read the Shirley Jackson biography by Ruth Franklin? So good! (And a tie back to Nabokov because her husband has a literary feud with VN.) Do you have a schedule somewhere of the stories you're reading this month? (If you did, I missed it somehow). There's a kind of variation on the trolley problem in the book I'm reading now, The Magus. In this novel, there's a World War II scenario where a guy essentially has to decide whether to execute two rebels or else have a big group of hostages killed. So tense.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Ha, I hadn't heard about the feud. That's great. Well, not the cleanest calendar but we list the month's scope in our TBR for what we're doing. We use Print-A-Calendar.com for organizing the schedule between us and then I just have screenshots of that posted on a discord server that Krypto and I use to coordinate. I'm not sure if there's a way to make the print-a-cal public. It would include all our scheduling plans so it wasn't created to be clean either.

[@anenthusiasticreader]

The CodeX Cantina Maybe you could use Twitter and alert your viewers about the next few stories you’ll be reading with a loose schedule? Nothing technical or set in stone, but it would be nice to know what stories are coming up.

[@TheCodeXCantina]

@@anenthusiasticreader Hmmm, I shall try it now!

[@joeykonyha2414]

Tessie’s mistake was taking the lump sum instead of the 30 year annuity.

[@ginahoggard9207]

What are your thoughts on Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Great story

[@Cherrydru6822]

Did you know that Hutchenson means someone who is new in the Colney

[@TheCodeXCantina]

I did not. Thanks for sharing.

[@rebeccamartyn5187]

Wow amazing story...the questions of Utilitarianism and the yrolley problem seem even more relevant with Covid now......but like... dudes ...you didn't mention the patriarchy?!

[@TheCodeXCantina]

Good stories have lot of angles to discuss. If an area is really well covered or maybe just didn't resonate with us as much we may go down a different route.

[@pooryorick831]

The "Hunger Games" analogy is interesting. But "Hunger Games" doesn't horrifying the way "The Lottery" does because the "Hunger Games " is set in an alternate reality where it is obviously fantasy. But we will come back to that in a moment. This is a story about something that has happened over and over again throughout history in many different cultures This story is a story of human sacrifice. But unlike human sacrifice in the Aztec culture or in other historical settings, here we see human sacrifice in a modern small town. That, and the almost mundane way in which they carry it out is what makes it horrifying in a way that stories of human sacrifice in ancient civilizations or in fantasy cannot. It is horrifying that people who all seem to know and like one another will dispassionate execute one of there own. And the only reasoning behind it is given by Old Man Warner when he says there _used_ to be a saying that went "Lottery in June, corn heavy soon." So there is some type of fertility ritual implied. But more practically the only other thing he can come up with is "There has always been a Lottery." we hear something like "we've always done it this way" as a justification for continuing to do things in a certain way. This story is not a story of ostracism. Tessie is obviously an accepted member of the community. It is about ritual and tradition taken to an extreme. It is about that part of us that will give itself to the group and transform a group into a mob. Again it is so horrifying because we can relate with these people right up until the point that they brutally murder one of their own apparently because they always have every year for at least the past 77 years, probably longer. This is one of the best examples of horror in a short story. The horror comes from the fact that these townspeople seem so normal and modern. But all it takes is a tradition or a nudge to transform friends and neighbors into cold blooded killers. It reminds us that the line between civilization and barbarism is very fine, and we are not so far ahead of our tribal ancestors who performed human sacrifice out of a superstitious need to appease the fertility gods. That is the best I can do first thing on a Monday morning.

[@markwilson389]

So much more to analyze here, but I disagree with your reasoning for an 8. Tessie doesn’t protest the Lottery until her family is chosen. She only says “It isn’t fair. It isn’t right” when she is selected. The message being: we don’t realize the evils of blindly trusting authority until it affects us personally, and by then it’s too late. Also, Tessie is not a revolutionary but a coward. Look no further than her suggestion about Don and Eva. Eva is her daughter! She suggests Eva chose with the Hutchinsons to reduce the probability that she herself is chosen, but since Eva is married, she chooses with her husband.

[@dylanwolf]

Weird how you Americans pronounce "route" and indeed Nabokov. The Lottery is a very American story and far too obvious. For a European and better short story try: My favourite short story - Franz Kafka's "The Hunger Artist" H.G. Wells "The Door in the Wall" is also worth analyzing.