The Explicator; Washington; Summer 1994; Yarmove,
Jay A

Volume:
52
Issue:
4
Start Page:
242
ISSN:
00144940
Subject Terms:
Short stories
Literary criticism
Personal Names:
Jackson, Shirley (writer)

The underpinnings of Shirley Jackson's famous
post-World War II story "The Lottery" demonstrate that
the work is far greater than the sum of its parts. The
date of the lottery, its location, and the symbolic or
ironic names of its characters all work to convey a
meaning that is even more disturbing than the shock
created by its well-known ending, namely, that despite
assurances during the late 1940s that "it couldn't
happen here," a microcosmal holocaust occurs in this
story and, by extension, may happen anyplace in
contemporary America. Coming after the revelation of
the depths of depravity to which the Nazis sank in their
eagerness to destroy other, "lesser" peoples, "The
Lottery" upsets the reader's sense of complacency.

Jackson lets us know the time of the lottery at the
outset of the story. From the description of the men's
talk of "tractors and taxes" (211) and the depiction of
Mr. Summers wearing a "clean white shirt and blue
jeans" (213), we may assume that we are in the
twentieth century, making the story's impact more
immediate. But why does the author choose June 27
as the date on which the village holds its lottery? The
summer solstice, June 21, has already passed, and
the Fourth of July is yet to come. The date, if not the
century, seems to have been capriciously chosen.
Such is not the case, however. June 27 falls halfway
between June 21 (the summer solstice) and July 4
(Independence Day). What significance do these two
days bear that makes June 27 the perfect compromise
between them?

In European societies, Midsummer's Day was
celebrated at the summer solstice, not in the middle of
summer as its name would suggest. Authors such as
Shakespeare, August Strindberg, and William Golding
have employed the pagan undertones of that day as a
motif in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Miss Julie, and
The Spire, respectively, for indeed Midsummer's Day
has a long, heathen, orgiastic tradition behind it.
American Independence Day, on the other hand, is
redolent of democracy, freedom, and, to a certain
degree, justice, because it marks the birth of a nation
anchored in the belief that people "are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable rights." June 27
bisects the two weeks between these dichotomous
dates and may well embody the contrast between
superstitious paganism and rational democracy, a
dynamic that plays a central role in "The Lottery,"
especially in light of the story's locale.

At no point does the author tell us where the lottery
takes place, but we are made aware of several
possible indicators. The town has a population of
about 300, and farming seems to be the normal way of
making a living. Most of the names are Anglo-Saxon in
origin. The land yields an abundance of stones. Most
important, the lottery is itself a model--albeit
perverted--of participatory democracy, the kind that
New England settlers made famous. All of these seem
to point to New England as the locale of the story. It is
also in keeping with New England's history of witch
trials and persecutions. (Being pressed to death by
heavy stones was not uncommon as a colonial
punishment for witchcraft, as may be seen in Arthur
Miller's The Crucible.)

Not only do time and place bear important clues as to
the allegorical meaning of "The Lottery," but the very
names of the characters are laden with significance.
The prominent names--Summers, Adams, Graves,
Warner, Delacroix, and (most obviously) Tessie
Hutchinson--have much to tell us. For the season of
the lottery is summer, and the larger scope of this work
encompasses mankind in general (for instance,
"Adam" means "man" in Hebrew). "Graves" sounds a
somber, forewarning note of what will happen to
Tessie, and the oldest man in town, Old Man Warner
(the others have either died or been killed of warns us
about the primordial function of the lottery, which is to
ensure fertility: "Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in
June, corn be heavy soon' " (215). Mrs. Delacroix's
name alludes to the pseudo-crucifixion of Tessie.

It is the irony that lies behind the protagonist's name,
Tessie Hutchinson, that magnifies the allegorical force
of this story. Historically, there really was a well-known
New England Hutchinson--Anne Hutchinson, who,
having been exiled from the Massachusetts Bay
Colony in 1638 because of her religious beliefs,
emigrated to Rhode Island, where she established her
own church. Eventually, she and most of her family
died in an Indian massacre outside of what is today
New Rochelle, New York. Some might call such a
woman a martyr, who was exiled and died for her
beliefs. Our protagonist, however, has no strongly held
beliefs, except her belief in self-survival. The name
"Tessie" parodies the most famous Tess in literature,
Tess Durbeyfield, the protagonist of Thomas Hardy's
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, who in Hardy's portrait of her
as the plaything of fate, dies ignominiously, since "the
President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had
ended his sport with Tess" (446). Now we must ask, Is
Tessie Hutchinson in our story an ingenue, as Hardy's
protagonist clearly is?

Of course not! Tessie "came hurriedly along the path
to the square ... 'Clean forgot what day it was' she said
to Mrs. Delacroix ... and they both laughed softly....'I
remembered it was the twenty-seventh and came
a-running'" (213). "Mrs. Hutchinson said, grinning,
'Wouldn't have me leave m'dishes in the sink, now,
would you, Joe?' " (214). Good-natured Tessie actually
desires to come to the lottery, going so far as to run to
it, although the rest of the townspeople are subdued,
even nervous: the men's "jokes were quiet and they
smiled rather than laughed" (211). Mr. Summers and
Mr. Adams "grinned at one another humorlessly and
nervously" (215). Young Jack Watson also appears to
be nervous: "He blinked his eyes nervously and
ducked his head" (214). Later, someone in the crowd
says, " 'Don't be nervous, Jack'" (216). And not only
the men are nervous, of course. "'I wish they'd hurry,'
Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son. 'I wish they'd hurry'"
(216). However, to Tessie the lottery seems to be one
great lark: when her husband, Bill, is called upon to
choose his family's lottery ticket, Tessie urges him, "
'Get up there, Bill'" (215), although "by now, all
through the crowd there were men holding the small
folded papers in their large hands, turning them over
and over nervously" (215). What a great contrast there
is, in short, between the crowd's nervousness and
Tessie's nonchalance.

But when Tessie's family is chosen, she becomes a
woman transformed. "Suddenly, Tessie Hutchinson
shouted to Mr. Summers, 'You didn't give him time
enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It
wasn't fair!'" (216). Subsequently, she yells, "'There's
Don and Eva [the Hutchinsons' son-in-law and
daughter]. Make them take their chance!'" (216).
Putting aside for the moment her perfidy in singling
out her married children as possible victims to increase
her own chances of survival, we see that she is
manifestly not the good-humored, whimsical matron
whom we first saw eagerly entering the lottery. Her
protests of the unfairness of the process--a thought
that only now has occurred to her, since there is every
likelihood of her becoming the chosen victim ("'I tell
you it wasn't fair'" [217])--have a distinctly hollow ring
to them, and her defiant glance around the crowd, her
lips pursed, as she truculently goes up to the lottery
box to pick her ticket, belies her earlier easygoing
demeanor. Thus, the irony behind her name has come
full circle. Her final assertion ("'It isn't fair, it isn't right'")
is neither the cry of an innocent victim (Tessie is
definitely not Tess Durbeyfield) nor a martyr's
triumphant statement (Tessie is also certainly not Anne
Hutchinson). It is the peevish last complaint of a
hypocrite who has been hoisted by her own petard.

There were many Americans who, after the end of
World War II and the revelations of the early
Nuremburg trials in 1945 and 1946, smugly asserted
that such atrocities could happen in Nazi Germany but
not in the United States. After all, singling out one
person, one religion, one race for pejorative
treatment--these things just could not happen here. In
her postwar novel Gentleman's Agreement, Laura Z.
Hobson showed that such discrimination was in fact
alive and well. Shirley Jackson adds an even more
disturbing note in her story, which was initially
published in The New Yorker in 1948: custom and law,
when sanctioned by a selfish, unthinking populace,
can bring an otherwise democratic and seemingly just
society to the brink of paganism. Thus the date, the
location, and the names in Jackson's story help to
create the specter of a holocaust in the United States.

In this, "The Lottery" is eerily reminiscent of the ending
of Hardy's Tess. When Angel Claire and Tess
Durbeyfield flee to the pagan temple at Stonehenge,
they see the "eastward pillars and their architraves
[standing] up blackly against the light, and the great
flame-shaped Sunstone beyond them: and the Stone
of Sacrifice midway" (442-43). This image is an apt
metaphor for the plot of "The Lottery": despite
modernity, democracy, and American neighborliness,
the primitive, selfish, superstitious ghost of paganism
has been allowed to rear its ugly head and destroy
one of its own.

WORKS CITED

Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles. New York:
Dodd, Mead, 1960.

Jackson, Shirley. "The Lottery." The Lottery. New York:
Popular Library, 1949.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further
reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.