SacrificeBased on The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
There has never been a more shocking, haunting tale than Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. ... The symbolism Jackson uses is important, but often missed by just simply “reading the story”. ... After reading the story, I began to explore the life and background of Shirley Jackson. ... “Shirley Jackson struggled with a conflict between her dogged individuality and society’s requirement to adhere to its norms and standards. Jackson saw a second level of human nature, an inner identity lurking beneath the one which outwardly conforms with society’s expectations. Society’s repression of her individuality haunted Jackson in her personal life and expressed itself in her writing through the opposition of two levels of reality, one magical and one mundane, but both equally real” (Oppenheimer 1988:16). ... “Relations between Jackson and her mother were tense throughout her life, paralleling the conflict between Jackson and the society in which she found no place for herself. Jackson’s mother wrote to her once that. ... I believe this story symbolizes Jackson’s world. ... They have twisted minds and the people come together as a group and commit this heinous crime by participating in the lottery. This may be a reflection of the way Shirley saw her own family life. ... Since Jackson’s mother never understood her, she probably felt like she didn’t fit into her mother’s world. ... Jackson begins pointing out main structures in the town and mentions several times about gathering rocks. At this time in the story you do not know the significance of the rocks to the story, but I remember finding it strange to mention so often in such a short time-- five times in the first three paragraphs (Jackson 156). The way she describes the children piling the rocks seems peculiar because they are making “a great pile of stones in one corner of the square” (Jackson 156). ... She makes the statement that she “clean forgot what day it was” (Jackson 158). ... At this time, with everyone present, the lottery begins to unfold. ... Summers sat the box down and the “villagers kept their distance, leaving a space between themselves and the stool” (Jackson 157). ... The lottery process begins with Mr. ... After determining who has the marked slip, the lottery then is narrowed to a drawing consisting of their family members. ... Jackson begins to give us clues that the prize is not one worth winning. Tessie has said several times that it “isn’t fair” and her husband didn’t have “time enough to take any paper he wanted” (Jackson 160). The choice of having Tessie “win” the lottery had been foreshadowed earlier when she came late to the event and was looked at more as a joke to the town. ... It makes you wonder what the actual purpose of the lottery is. The lottery is an annual tradition that has lost some of the original qualities through the years, but the actual purpose is not directly stated. When Old Man Warner says, “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon” (Jackson 159), this leads the reader to believe he could be referring to an ancient crop planting ritual. Literary critic, Peter Kosenko stated in his analysis of the story, “At one level, the lottery seems to be a modern version of a planting ritual that might once have prepared the villagers for the collective work necessary to produce a harvest. ... ) As magical as Warner’s proverb may seem, it establishes an unconscious (unspoken) connection between the lottery and work that is revealed by the entirety of his response when told that other villages are considering doing away with the lottery”. ... Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for awhile” (Jackson 159). The overall attitude of the need for the lottery has apparently changed over the years. When Warner comments, “people ain’t the way they used to be” (Jackson 161), he implies that the ritual is changing as well as the participants.