Listen to the story here.                            Read the complete text.  

How did our students interpret the story? Here are some of their reactions.

A parable about violence not easily forgotten

Jackson introduces the small town in which the story takes place as an averaged American town. She keeps things general, though a few names are dropped, they all seem to be exchangeable, people mentioned are just stereotypes and the reader could easily replace their names with names of the villagers of his own home town.
So after having read the story and understood what this lottery is really like, the reader does not feel as if he has just read a very brutal fiction, but that Jackson was drawing a parable here. So the question is: what is it about?

It`s about a ritual and about people who find the very thought of changing it unimaginable. Not so unusual, but in this case unsettling because this ritual, to us as readers, is just murder. The fact that we detected it as such makes us, who feel so throughly civilized, feel superior to the villagers shown and we start watching things from “above”.
How can one do this? They kill a woman, a woman who they know very well, in the case of the family their own mother or wife, just for the ritual. We quickly think we must be facing a uncivilized community, we expect to find a religious reason or something comparable, but there`s nothing. Old Man Warner says something about the harvest but no one around him seems to be thinking about it, too. Except the fact they are killing someone, everything actually seems very civilized, very normal to us: They have civic activities and square dances and teen clubs in the village, the women talk gossip and the men are speaking of their jobs.

All in all, as said before, they could be living in the neighbourhood. So after all the shock is: There are civilized people just like you and me killing someone during a ritual whose sense obviously got lost over the years. They just refuse to abolish it. A symbol of that is the black box from which people draw. Though it`s getting shabbier and shabbier no one wants to “upset (...) tradition”. Actually we can observe this in our daily life: people want to have what they have become used to, even if it could easily be replaced. Even if it`s something very trivial like for example a coffee machine which doesn`t work all right- as long as one can somehow or other make coffee with it he will hesitate exchanging it.

Jackson suggests that humans will act this way even when it comes to killing someone: as long is has “ever been this way” people feel there is no need to reflect. No matter how drastic the tradition. Once you get used to it -and the villagers grew up this way, they don`t know anything else- you lose the neutral, reflecting view. By choosing to show a ritual which is not just senseless but brutal Jackson maybe intents to show how violent acts still are part of human nature despite the long history of civilisation.

The lottery serves the villagers as a valve for their instinct to kill. By integrating it into their annual habit they protect themselves from feeling guilty or terrified. But the more normal it appears to be to them the more frightening it`s for the readers. Making violence part of growing up, educating even little children to kill is upsetting because it means setbacks for civilisation of two kinds: on the one hand, of course, the promotion of violence. But on the other hand, maybe even worse, children growing up there learn to turn their backs on everyone else except themselves, to be selfish and to life with the survival instinct. Jackson shows that instinct when Tessie is willing to make her own daughter draw with the Hutchinsons just to enlarge her own chances to survive.

Jackson shocks her readers to make sure they won`t forget her writing so soon. And if a reader of “The Lottery” gets to hear “But it has always been like this!” he will for sure pay a lot more attention to the question “Why?”   (L.H., 11a, April 2010)

On the 27^th of June the inhabitants of a small village gather together in the square of the village to hold their annual tradition. This tradition in this village and in the neighbouring towns has been maintained in living memory. With slight changes the lottery has been taking place since the settlement of this village. It starts with the reading out of the family names. Every householder chooses from slips of paper and Bill Hutchinson draws the marked paper. Then every member of the family has to choose again and Tessie, Bill Hutchinson´s wife, gets the paper with the black point on it. The villagers grab the prepositioned stones and start to stone Tessie to death.

The strange story starts with the description of a nice summer day. The people are very normal, the children are delighted about the school holidays, which have just started and their parents talk about the weather, taxes and tractors. Everything is very normal and familiar.  Gradually though it becomes clear for the reader that there is nothing to be won at this lottery. At the end he gets to know that it is about a collective murder of an innocent person.

Once a year the apparently nice villagers leave the idyll behind and gather together for this collective ritual murder. It shows that in every single person something brutish is hidden, which comes up once a year.This ritualised tradition prevents the decay of society - or at least the people think so. Because of the civilization though, the aggressions of the villagers get restrained.

The lottery, the random selection procedure for the murder, is Shirley Jackson´s image of randomness, which defines the black sheep in real society. In reality most times minorities are defined to be the black sheep, in Shirley Jacksons story though, it could hit everyone. If the victim is chosen accidentally, then the lottery would not survive in real society for a very long time. If you are afraid of losing your own life, the lottery would not be fun and it would only be held for so long as your own desire to kill is stronger than the fear to die.

In the short story there are some villagers who are against the lottery though, like in some neighbourhoods. But the old villagers like Old Warner prevail. For him the abolition of the lottery would be like the return to the barbarity: "They will be wanting to go back to living in caves." It can be see that the author inserted a sense of irony to the whole story.

Shirley Jackson shows that everyone does not mind about doing his share of action, if society demands it and it is tolerated.
(C.S., 11a, April 2010)

The short story ''The Lottery'', written by Shirley Jackson and published in 1948, deals with the violence and cruelty of a tradition of the citizens of a small, idyllic village in America.
Once a year, on the 27^th of June, all the members of the small town gather in one place to conduct their regular ritual, called ''The Lottery''.
Every year all of the people have to draw lots out of a black box, and every year someone is going to be picked as the winner of the lottery. But for the winner it isn't a victory at all. The prize is that you will be killed with stones by all of the other citizens – your family, friends and neighbours.
Just as Tessie Hutchinson, one of the victims of this annual tradition – a tradition which has been upheld for more than 77 years and which is just used to improve the harvest. Tessie Hutchinson loses her life because of choosing the wrong slip – just as many people before, because of this annual tradition.

''The Lottery'' is a story about an inhuman, annual tradition of a whole village and its effects and consequences. It is a ritual which is characterized by the cruelty and the thoughtlessness of the entire society.
Tens of years ago, the inhabitants of the village started to sacrifice humans once a year to improve their harvest by stoning the victims to death, and this tradition never stopped. Many years later, they still follow this ancient tradition and will not break with it, even though they not even know about the whole old-time procedure and for what reason people in former times used this ritual. They just follow it, although they do not even know why. For all of the people it is a typical procedure, which has nothing to do with cruelty. For them it is totally normal, they just want to get it over with to get home on time. The citizens are very friendly, talk to each other and seem to be in a good mood. Even the children regard this process more as a game than a serious instance. Therefore they are all not able to see the insanity and violence of their doing, for them this whole instance is normality. In recent years they got used to the fact that there has to be someone, who is going to die for the welfare of their community.

''The Lottery'' is especially dominated by the cruelty of the villagers. No one of the citizens feels sympathy for the victims or wants to help or protect them. As soon as someone has been picked as the winner of ''The Lottery'', everybody else is glad to have escaped. In that case no one cares for the victims at all. Although the victim Tessie Hutchinson screams, cries and protests about the unfairness of the lottery, no one listens to her, because she has chosen the wrong slip.
With her short story Shirley Jackson wants to show humans the importance of thinking about their actions and about the reasons for it and also wants to animate them to consider their own moral values.
The essential question she wants us to think about is what would happen, if every member of society would exactly think and act like the figures of the story do and how people would handle this situation.   (J.B., 11a, April 2010)

The  story by Shirley Jackson is about a small village with its inhabitants and their annual ritual known as "the lottery". Children gather up stones while the adults get together for this event. In the first round of the lottery, the head of each family draws a slip of paper. Bill Hutchison gets the one with the black spot on it, which means that his family has been chosen. Then each family member has to draw another slip and this time Tess Hutchison, Bill’s wife, has the one. Keeping to the tradition the inhabitants stone her to death to ensure a good harvest.

The controversial story starts off in the small village. It is a beautiful summer day and the author describes it in the most idyllic way, but there is a contrast between the atmosphere of the town and of the people gathered in the square. They seem nervous and stressed although they are talking about normal things like the weather or the taxes.

The black box is the central theme in the story because at first it symbolizes some kind of mystery, but the more we read, we realize that someone’s fate lies in that box. Due to the fact that this box is really old and attrited we can see that people rather keep familiar things than change them and it shows the tradition of the community. No one in the town can really remember the origin of the box or the whole tradition but they accept it as a part of their lives.

The lottery might be a symbol for the paradox of the human psyche between compassion and love on the one hand and the urge for crueltiy and violence on the other. The people think they stone somebody for good harvest, but they do not even think why this tradition should not be happening.

Moreover the lottery stands for the fact that we in the real world always search for the ones to blame. We search and find them when we look for different religions, nationalities, cultures, political attitudes or skin colors. And then there is Tessi Hutchison. She is the one who has to die. When she was in no danger she was gossiping with the other women and even encouraged her husband to go and pick a slip. As soon as Tessi “wins“ the lottery, she begs for another chance and cries for mercy. She acutally demands that her daughters take their chance as well, because she is desperate and we all have a basic instinct of survival. We see that even as Tessie is being stoned to death she does not question the reasoning behind the lottery, but only why it should be her that has to die.

But there is a little bit of hope because there are some people who are for the abolishment of the lottery. And although Old Man Warner says "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. 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“, some folks start to feel some displeasure about the whole tradition and there might be an abolishment in the future.  (J.H., 11a, April 2010)

The story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson takes place in a small village where the people are close and tradition is paramount. A yearly event called "The Lottery" is one in which one person in the town is randomly chosen by a drawing to be violently stoned by friends and family. The drawing has been around over seventy-seven years and is practiced by every member of the town.

Jackson´s use of friendly language among the villagers and the presentation of the lottery as an event similar to the square dances and Halloween programs illustrates the lottery as a welcomed event. She describes the social atmosphere of the women prior to the drawing: "They greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip..." (line 281). The lottery is conducted in a particular manner, and with so much anticipation by the villagers that the reader expects the winner to receive a prize or something of that manner. It is not until the very end of the story that the reader learns of the winner´s fate: Death by friends and family.

The story does not become violent until the end. Jackson does foretell the idea through Mr Summers and Mr Graves. Mr Summers is the man in charge of the lottery. He prepares the slips of paper to be drawn and he mediates the activity. He is described as a respected man, joking around with the villagers, and carrying on this foreboding event with no conscience at all. "Mr Summers was very good at all this; in his clean white shirt and blue jeans, with one hand resting carelessly on the black box, he seemed very proper and important as he talked interminably to Mr Graves and the Martins" (line 282). Mr Graves is Mr Summer's assistant, always present but not necessarily in the spotlight. His unobvious character foreshadows the wickedness of the ordinary people.

"The Lottery" presents a weakness in human individuals. This town having performed such a terrible act for so many years continues with the lottery, with no questions asked and the main purpose being to carry on the tradition. "There´s always been a lottery" (284), Old Man Warner says. "Nothing but trouble in that", he says about plans of quitting the event. However, the villagers show some fear of the event. Comments such as "Don´t be nervous Jack" (284) and "Get up there Bill" indicate that the people may not be entirely comfortable with the event. Yet everyone still goes along with it. Not a single person openly expresses fear or disgust toward the lottery but instead pretend enthusiasm. Jackson may be suggesting that many individuals are not strong enough to express their disapproval for fear of being rejected by society. Instead they continue to sacrifice their happiness for the sake of others. The failure of Mr Summers to replace the black box used for the drawing symbolizes the villagers´ failure to stand up for their beliefs.

The situation in "The Lottery" is slightly relevant to our society today. We tend to flock toward nasty gossip and are interested in spite of the privacy of the subjects involved. no matter whether it is standing on the side to watch a fight, an accident, or discussing the relationship between two people. We have no problem remarking on an individual´s adultery until it is ourselves that get caught. It seems we sometimes condemn every-day truths that we know are characteristics of most people, including ourselves, and are afraid to admit them, place the spotlight on someone else. It is sad and definitely hypocritical, but it happens all the time. And I think Shirley Jackson makes this point without having to say a word about it. (C.-M.R., 11a, April 2010)