Episode 41: The Lottery Shirely Jackson

Want to support the podcast? Check out atiskettasketpodcast.com to find out how you can help. In this intriguing podcast episode, the host delves into the eerie world of Shirley Jackson's iconic short story, "The Lottery." You'll discover the hidden depths of this chilling tale, exploring the dark themes of tradition, conformity, and morality. With a critical lens, the episode unearths the unsettling nature of how ordinary people can commit unspeakable acts, all in the name of tradition. By dissecting the story's literary tropes, the episode offers a fresh perspective on the narrative, making it an excellent choice for high school literature classes. Through engaging insights and an analysis of Jackson's craft, this episode illuminates the story's power to captivate and challenge young readers while providing an opportunity for thoughtful discussion and reflection. Whether you're a fan of Jackson's work or a high school teacher searching for thought-provoking material, this podcast episode is a must-listen, offering a unique and unforgettable journey into the world of "The Lottery." 

Transcript

Gina: 0:45

Hey. I'm leaving next week for the American folklore conference in boy. Am I getting nervous? The title of my presentation his nursery rhymes as erosion control, keeping history rooted in the present. The theme of the conference is roots and rootlessness, and I will be speaking about how scholars should consider a nursery rhymes as important historical artifacts. That should be continually studied. If you are in the Portland, Oregon area, come by and listen. If you'd like to listen to this presentation virtually I'll have a recording up in ready of my presentation for sale on my Patrion and link in the description below. If you'd like to support the podcast, please visit my website. Also I'm tinkering around with it. So if it looks a little bit different, that's why also the link is in the description below for that as well, to see how you can do so. It would be a very big help. Finally, I'm announcing that I'm taking the month of November off. I need a break before the end of the year, and I am incredibly busy with everything going on, but I will be happily back in December with some holiday themed nursery rhymes. This week, we will finish up on the spooky tales for October, and then I'll be back in December with an episode heralding the holiday season. Stay tuned for that. Now let's move on to this week's episode. Today, I'm going to be talking about Shirley Jackson's short story, the lottery. Written in 1948, the lottery is a sinister short story. That tells a story how evil can easily become commonplace. Jackson published the story in the new Yorker and it was met with a immediate criticism. Biographer Erin McCarthy writes the lottery appeared three weeks after Jackson's agent had submitted it. And there was instant controversy. Hundreds of readers canceled their subscriptions and wrote letters, expressing their rage and confusion about the story. In one such litter, Miriam friend, a librarian turned housewife wrote. I frankly, confessed to be completely baffled by Shirley. Jackson's the lottery. Will you please send us a brief explanation before my husband and I scratch right through our scalps, trying to fathom it. Others called the story outrageous, gruesome and utterly pointless. I will never buy the new Yorker again. One reader from Massachusetts wrote. I resent being tricked into reading perverted stories, like the lottery. There were phone calls too, though. The new Yorker didn't keep a record of what was said. Or how many calls came in? McCarthy it goes on to say that despite these criticisms, the lottery is a staple in high schools. And before i get into why that might be let me read a short summary of the story The villagers of a small town gathered together in the square on June 27th, a beautiful day for the town lottery. And other towns, a lottery takes longer, but there are only 300 people in this village. So the lottery takes only two hours. Village children who have just finished school for the summer run around collecting stones. They put the stones in their pockets and make a pile in the square. Men gathered next, followed by the women. Parents call their children over in family. Stand together. Mr. Summers runs the lottery because he has a lot of time to do things for the village. He arrived in the square with the black box followed by Mr. Graves, the postmaster. This black box isn't the original box use for a lottery because the original was lost many years ago, even before the town elder. Old man Warner was born. Mr. Summers always suggests that they may make a new box because the current one is shabby, but no one wants to fool around with tradition. Mr. Summers did. However, convince the villagers to replace the traditional wood chips with slips of paper. Mr. Summers. Mixes up the slips of paper in the box. He and Mr. Graves made the papers the night before and then locked up the box at Mr. Summers coal company. Before the lottery can begin, they make a list of all the families and households in the village. Mr. Summers is sworn it. Some people remember that in the past, there used to be a song in a salute. But these have been lost. Tessy Hutchinson's joins the crowd flustered because she had forgotten that today was the day of the lottery. She joins her husband and children at the front of the crowd. And people joke about her late arrival. Mr. Summers asks whether anyone is absent in the crowd response that Dunbar isn't there. Mr. Sommer asks who will draw from Mr. Dunbar. And Mrs. Dunbar says she will, because she doesn't have a son who's old enough to do it for her. Mr. Summers asks whether the Watson boy will draw and he answers that he will. Mr. Summers then asks to make sure that old man winner is there too. Mr summer. It reminds everyone about the lottery rules. He'll read the names and the family heads up and draw a slip of paper. No one should look at the paper until everyone has drawn. He calls all the names. Greeting each person as they come up to draw paper. Mr. Adam tells old man Warner that people in the north village might stop the lottery in old man Warner, ridicules, young people. He says that giving up the lottery could lead to a return to living in capes. Mrs. Adams says that the lottery has been given up and other villagers and old man winner says that's nothing but trouble. Mr. Sellers finishes calling names and everyone opens his or her papers. Word quickly gets around that bill Hutchinson has got it. Tessie argues that it wasn't fair because bill didn't have enough time to select the paper. Mr. Summers asks whether there are any other households in the Hutchinson's family in bill says no, because his married daughter draws with her husband's family. Mr. Summers asks how many kids bill has, and he answers that he has three. Tessie protests again, the lottery wasn't fair. Mr. Graves dumps the papers out of the box onto the ground, and then puts five papers in for the Hutchinson's. As Mr. Summers calls their names. Each member of the family comes up and draws a paper. When they opened their slips, they find that Tessy has drawn the paper with the black dot on it. Mr. Summers instructs everyone to hurry up. The villagers grabbed stones and run toward Tessie who stands in a clearing in the middle of the crowd. Tessie says it's not fair in this hit in the head with a stone. Everyone begins throwing stones at her. And that's it. That's the lottery by Shirley Jackson. And the summary really does not do the short story justice. Please Google the short story. It's really easy to find. I will link the PDF. On my website. It's very short. And the reason why I picked it was well, a number of reasons. What if it's different than the other stories that we looked at this month? The other stories we looked at were very obvious in their haunting horror themes. I picked Gothic horror, short stories. Where the haunting and the. Eby GBS and eeriness was very clear in upfront. But I wanted to pick a short story that was more sinister in the subdued nature. I don't think that the lottery is less scary than the previous stories that I picked, but it is definitely more subversive. What are the things that really stood out to me in the lottery when I read it for the first time is how normal the story reads up until the very last line. I'm to go ahead and play an audio clip, being read by actress, Maureen Stapleton. Published in 1944 by Harper audio. I do think this is still under copyright, so I'm not going to play too long, but I wanted to play the first paragraph or so, and I want you to pay attention to the adjectives used. So we'll go ahead and listen to that. The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day. The flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in a square. Between the post office and the bank, around 10 o'clock. The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them.

8:56

They tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play.

Gina: 9:01

Wasn't that just amazing. I mean, listen to the adjectives used at the very beginning, the day is described as clear and sunny. It's described as having the warmth of a summer day in the trees and flowers are blossoming. The grass was nice and fragrant. People were excited to be outside. The children are merely running around because they're freshly out of school. And I think that's one of the reasons what. Mix the lottery as a short story. So great is that I would say 90% of the short story is described in this positive language. You don't. You as the reader don't understand. What's going on and if you ignore the like foreshadowing, it just seems like a nice summer day where the villagers are gathering around. And in fact, one of my favorite quotes. The lottery was conducted. As we're the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program by Mr. Summers who had time and energy to devote to civic activities. I love that sentence because in it, it just conveys that what's happening with the lottery is just another. Village activity it's compared to a square dance for goodness sake. And it, it. Tries to LOL this reader into a sense of conformity of village values. And I think that's what makes the, the murder of tests so violent at the end. At the beginning I talked about. That the short story is very popular in high school literature classes. And I think it's because there are very strong literary tropes that are easily picked out. The first one of course I would say is the strongest is foreshadowing. It's this idea of the lottery. There's a bunch of foreshadowing in the story. One of which is talking about the boys running around and picking up stones. This idea of long-lasting traditional values with the description of the black box. If you really read into it, you start to get some of these sinister pings, but I feel like it's weaved so well into the story. That it just works so well with the parallels of the positive imagery. The other reason why I think it is so successful as a story to teach in classrooms is this idea of traditionalism. This story was written in 1948, so right after world war II in right at the beginning of the cold war. And when we think about how Americans were feeling at the time, we've a strong sense of. Uber patriotism. We have the start of the red scare in conformism. We have the start of the scare of communism. And so this idea of traditional values, this idea of conformity are starting to become incredibly strong tropes in American society. And that's what Shirley Jackson is really hitting on here. She makes it a story about the village homogeny because those traditions were valued at the time. And so it's not until we get to the end where the reader is feeling a sense of horror because the people of this village are okay with blatant murder of one of their own. And that's one of the tropes that really is clear in Jackson's story. It shows how these towns people are very rigid. They are unquestioning of. Traditional rituals. That. When you look at independently and you look at. Without the lens of traditional reality is these rituals are brutal. They're Savage. It can donate a murder, but people are going with it because that's how everything was done. And again, at the beginning of the story, when they're talking about old man Walters, I think his name was. And people are like, well they're talking about how other villages have stopped a lottery. And the old man of the town was like, oh, we can't do that. We'd be no better than Kate man. If we're getting up our values. But when you really look at it, there's no reason to have this lottery. It's literally condoning the killing of an innocent person. Another reason why? I think this is a popular high school piece of literature. And somethings, I think Jackson does really well. Is. There's no sense of where this takes place. It could be any city in America. And I think that adds a level of horror. And eeriness, that is not seen in the previous stories that we talked about. Because this story could happen anywhere. When we think of the legend of sleepy hollow and the ghost summoning, things like that. It has a very specific setting. Especially the legend of sleepy hollow. It's very tied to its roots, I guess, no pun intended, but the lottery, I think some of the sinisterness that comes from it is that it really could be any town in America. It's never explicitly stated where it's from. It's just, it's a small town with a village of everyday Americans. So overall again, what I think makes this story so effective for readers is it's talk of tradition. Of cultural performing seemingly irrational rituals because that's, what's always been done. And further this idea of kind of magical thinking or just the group mentality that this idea that this village has faith in something. And so people have control over. An action. And that's why the lottery has been done a year after year is that it gives the villagers a sense of control. Further on other key aspect is morality. And. It really brings up gray morality. And I think this is something that was great to bring up. Among high schoolers minds, especially is, you know, asking the question, it's a lottery moral. As the reader, we can easily say no, it's absolutely not moral and still you're killing an innocent person. Yet. If you ask the people of the village, they don't see anything wrong with this because that's what it's always been done. We see this as something easily to dismiss as pointless and barbaric, but to the villagers. It's a superstitious and it needs to be done. Plus the story really focuses on the nature of evil. What is being evil, are the villagers evil for doing what they for stoning Tessie, the deaf. Are there good people who can do unspeakable things? Is it the right thing? Is that the wrong thing? And so I really think that this story can spark a debate that is different than some of the stories that we talked about this month, it's still, I don't know, still really haunting. I think. And. I think what's scariest of all to me as a millennial is this idea of conformity. And I talked about that. I really think that this has an effect effective story in high schools because the nature of being a teenager and finding oneself and growing into oneself. Talking about conformity in the classroom and seeing it in a piece of literature. I think can be very resounding to students and it could be an effective way to really get them to think beyond themselves. And so I didn't really mean for this podcast episode to be like a champion of why the lottery should be taught in high schools. But the more I talk about it, the war, I warm up to this idea because I think it's a haunting story that could catch teenagers off guard. Because when they first read it, they're not really going to see until the end, like the horror aspect. And I think it could like really surprise them, but also I think it can go into some really deep thoughts. About life. And teach literary analysis because of some various obvious tropes. But in any case, I think that the lottery is a must read for everyone, especially in this spooky season. It's very short. If you want to read something more along the lines of traditional Gothic, horror. Shirley Jackson wrote haunting at hill house, which I think might be here most popular story. I'm not sure, but it's also a fantastic read. The plot alternates between two timelines. It's really cool. And it follows five adult siblings whose paranormal experiences at Hillhouse continue to haunt them in present day. And it uses flashbacks depicting events leading up to the eventful night in 1992, when the family finally fled from the mansion. And it contains the traditional Gothic horror tropes that we saw in the ghost summons that we saw in the lady mates, bell, and as well as the headless horseman. So it is what I would consider a more traditional. Look at. Gothic horror by Jackson. But I really think Jackson adds her spin on it because she uses adjective so well to paint scenes. And I really love it. And I really think it's perfect for young adult readers because it introduces them to some complicated and complex literary tropes, but in a very digestible and easy way. So again this podcast episode wasn't supposed to be like toward high school teachers. But if you're a high school teacher and you're looking for something to teach, I advocate for Shirley Jackson. I think your stuff's cool. I think it's easily digestible and something interesting that students would find fascinating. It's not bone dry. It's not going to bore them to death. And you can still add that sense of eeriness in the month of October or in the fall. When you were looking for some hunting pieces to talk about. And any case, that's it for me this week. Again, I am taking the month of November off for a well-deserved break. Plus I am working on a number of projects and it'll give me time to kind of catch up. But there are a bunch of nursery rhymes to talk about winter and Christmas and other fun holiday things. And so I'm very excited for the month of December where I will spend the month talking about holiday themed. Sure your rhymes. Stay tuned again. If you'd like to listen to my presentation that I'm giving at the American folklore conference. It will be available on sale on my Patrion, and you can find it via my website. Lincoln the description below. I'm also looking for general support on the podcast. For things like hosting my website. And paying for software and things like that, but stay tuned. Why we'll continue to talk about. Weirdness. Of nursery rhymes.