Category: Shirley Jackson

Throughout the world People do things for various reasons. Belief, survival, religion, peer pressure, culture or tradition, are some of the reasons the people carry out things. People have various traditions such as Christmas, Easter Day and so forth. Some people have strange or out of the ordinary traditions. The two short stories The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner? Both depict the theme of tradition. By exploring violence, brutality, and death within these traditions, similarities and differences emerge between the two tales.

Both of the short stories are told from a 3rd person perspective—an outsider or townsperson looking into the lives of the protagonists. Rather than allowing the reader to experience the character’s thoughts and feelings, the authors let the stories unfold solely based on their plot development. This allows the reader to be a “fly on the wall,” and join the community in their gossip. Despite what an outsider may see externally, often times if one looks more closely, they will discover the truth. In A Rose for Emily, the townspeople thought that Miss Emily was hiding from society, but after looking more closely, they discover she was hiding the secret death of Homer Barron, her boyfriend. Otherwise, Shirley Jackson spends a lot of time describing the setting of the town in The Lottery, ultimately creating a mood of normality and optimism under the overarching positive understanding of the story’s title. However, once looking more closely, the mood contrasts with the horror of the story’s ending when the town stones Tessie Hutchinson to death. Which makes the two short stories is ironic, comic, unbelievable and mysterious. In The Lottery, the narrator tells the reader that there has always been a lottery when stating, “the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born” (Jackson). This statement reveals that the lottery is a tradition in town that they characters were born into believing in blindly.

None of the characters have lived a life where the lottery did not exist, thus this occasion is anormality to them. Summers had spoke frequently to the town about making a new box, “But no one liked to upset as much tradition as was represented by the black box. […] Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about the new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything being done” (Jackson). This paragraph in the text reiterates the town’s inability to stray away from the ritual of their ancestors.

Each story concludes with surprising the reader and death is saved for the very end. In A Rose for Emily, the disrupted chronological events allow the author to surprise the reader or audience. The reader or audience is aware in the opening sentence of the story that Emily passes away, “When Miss Emily died, our whole town went to her funeral” (Faulkner). Death is revealed multiple times throughout the course of the plot, However, the grandest reveal was saved for the very end when the reader and the town discover the murder of Homer Barron. “What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust” (Faulkner). In The Lottery, the plot development does not use flashbacks like Faulkner, however Jackson utilizes foreshadowing to hint at the astonishing ending. In the very beginning of the story the text states, “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones” (Jackson). Initially the reader or audience may believe that the collection of stones was simply just the kids having fun, however, after the reader is aware of the ending, someone may connect the two events.

A Rose for Emily roughly takes place in the late 1800’s and although The Lottery takes place in an unnamed time period, both stories reflect similar views on society. Both stories depict the struggles that an individual or group encounters in order to avoid the loss of cultural or family traditions. Miss Emily lived a lonely life due to her inability to adapt to the changing world around her. In the beginning of the story, the narrator sets up the framework of isolation by writing, “our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant – a combine gardener and cook – had seen in at least ten years” (Faukner). This opening immediately clues the reader in on the partitions that exist between Miss Emily and the townspeople. Her refusal to enter the outside world reflects Emily forcing the past upon her and shutting the present out of her life. When the next generation of aldermen sent Emily her tax notice, she returned a “note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all” (Faukner). Her handwriting and her stationery exhibit how Miss Emily is living in the past. After her father’s death, Emily insisted that her father was not dead for three days before a threat from law enforcement forced her to surrender her father’s corpse. She desperately held onto the past and struggled to enter the daunting unknown of the present. Also, she could not recognize between the past and the present.

Shirley Jackson spends a lot of time describing the setting of the town in The Lottery, ultimately creating a mood of normality and optimism under the overarching positive understanding of the story’s title. However, once looking more closely, the mood contrasts with the horror of the story’s ending when the town stones Tessie Hutchinson to death. In A Rose for Emily, the townspeople thought that Miss Emily was hiding from society, but after looking more closely, they discover she was hiding the secret death of Homer Barron. In The Lottery, the tradition is display in three major ways. First, The Lottery is held every year. Tradition is upheld in this way because it introduces the younger generation to the tradition. This shows that the lottery is a tradition because traditions happen over and over again. Old Man Warner says, “there has always been a lottery.” (Jackson). The town people accept “The Lottery” because there has always been a lottery. The older people in the town such as Old Man Warner keeps the tradition alive with their ideals. Lastly, tradition is shown with the parifanilia used in the story of The Lottery?. The black box is a symbol of what was in the years past. The black box used to draw names is a duplicate of the original. The black colour is a symbol of death or misfortune. Which is presented in The Lottery, the end of the story.

However, tradition in A Rose For Emily is also shown in three major ways. First, Emily does not get courted by anyone. This would not seem to be a standard tradition but in the short story Emily’s father was not following their tradition when doing this because the standard tradition would be to allow Emily to become involved with anybody. Second, tradition is shown with Emily cutting her hair. Emily cut her hair after her father passed away (Faulkner). This shows some tradition because women in that time and place of society do not cut their hair unless they want to show something. Emily was showing she had gotten over her father’s death and ready to move on with her life. Finally, A Rose for Emily shows tradition in the way the townspeople treated Miss. Emily. Tradition is shown when the older generation of people put lime down instead of confronting Emily with the smell. The elders of the town also accepted Emily to go without paying taxes after she told them she did not have to pay them. Second, both stories have women as the main characters as the ones showing tradition. Miss. Emily was the woman in A Rose for Emily that showed tradition. Tessie was the woman in The Lottery that showed tradition in the story. Thus, The Lottery and A Rose for Emily both show tradition in the same ways. First, in both stories the elders had the strongest tradition. In the story A Rose for Emily the older generation are the ones that respected Emily and let her get away with many things such as the taxes. In The Lottery old man Warner was the person keeping “The Lottery” alive with his ideals and his role in The Lottery throughout so many years. Finally, in both stories the tradition changed a little. In A Rose for Emily the younger generation was changing the tradition in the way they treat the elder, august named people. In The Lottery the rituals and sayings that have been taken out of the agenda of The Lottery changed the tradition.

In the short story, A Rose For Emily, for old tradition Agriculture is being supplanted by aristocratic neighborhoods, and industry with their proud plantation-style houses like the Grierson’s are being encroached upon by less grandiose but more economically practical garages and cotton gins. Even as white Southerners cling to their ideals, pre-Civil War traditions, and institutions, the world around them is quickly changing. Furthermore, the post-Sartoris generation of authorities in Jefferson, those men who belong to the Board of Aldermen that governs the town are increasingly moving away from their forbears’ aristocratic and chivalric ideals toward “more modern ideas” and practical, progressive governance,hence their decision to try to exact taxes from Emily after all. While many years earlier, the gallant old Judge Stevens balks at the idea of telling a lady to her face that her property stinks, the authorities from this newer generation, we might imagine, would have fewer qualms about doing so. In contrast to,

The Lottery, The people in the story do the lottery and the death by stoning to death; because that’s what they have always done. They just apply it even though nobody remembers exactly why. They don’t ask the morality of it or even the purpose of it. Old Man Warner gives the story’s only clue as to the original purpose of the lottery.

‘Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.”

“Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery,’

‘Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery,’

Old Man Warner said as he went through the crowd. ‘Seventy-seventh time.’ It seems like the original purpose of the lottery was a sacrifice to secure rain for the crops. Readers are told by Mr. Adams that several other towns are giving up the lottery, which means that the lottery doesn’t make sense or doesn’t apply to those other areas. It seems that Mr. Adams supports that idea, but Old Man Warner replies, ‘Pack of crazy fools.’ That indicates that Old Man Warner supports the lottery tradition no matter what. Moreover, Old Man Warner has been to 77 lotteries since his first one at age 16. He must have been so lucky to not have won the lottery over all those years. He is set in his ways and sees no reason to change the Lottery. He believes only bad will come from making any changes in the Lottery, stating the young people not keeping to tradition were fools. Also he believes for a good harvest, if the town continues with the Lottery When the winner of the lottery is determined. Old Man Warner is exhorting everyone, “Come on, come on, everyone’ (Jackson) to get them started in throwing stones at Mrs. Hutchinson. His actions appear to be to be rote; he has done this all his life and it’s time to do it again. He finds nothing wrong with it.

To sum up, both stories struggle with progressing with the advancements in society—Emily reflects this by locking herself and Homer’s corpse in her home all of those years, and the town in The Lottery reflects this by refusing to stray away from the stoning and cruel tradition despite other nearby towns eliminating the ritual. Even though, it obviously they are wrong cruel crazy and blind. But they are loyal to their belief, ritual and tradition. Anyone in the town could be a victim in order to sacrifice the one who is seemed to be as a scapegoat for their living specifically their harvest. Miss Emily as mentally ill lived a lonely life due to her inability to adapt to the changing world around her. Emily is strict or dreamy about the idea that she belongs to her aristocratic class while she is alone; because that is her family’s tradition or she just gets a heritage from her father. Emily obviously loves her heritage, so she pursues for which is called the American dream, precisely getting married and keeping her high position of the class in the American society and her heritage. I have seen the short stories, The Lottery and A Rose for Emily, In which I understood it is a brutal life the way they live in order to survive and obey the rule of their own tradition and ancestor’s tradition as they have faith of this tradition. In contrast, the town in The Lottery is a community that is unwilling to accept change as a whole. This reluctant choice to change ultimately causes death and violence in both tales. This brutality and morbidity thus enhances the overall themes in the text and hold a lasting impression in the reader’s mind. The short stories The Lottery and A Rose for Emily both have their own ways of showing tradition. The Lottery had three main ways of showing tradition, A Rose for Emily had three main ways of showing tradition also, and both stories have some of the same concepts of traditions.

Works Cited

1. Faulkner, William. ‘A Rose for Emily’ An Introduction to Literature. Ed. Joseph Terry. NewYork: Longman, (2001): 362-368.
2. Jackson, Shirley. ‘The Lottery.’ Bridges: Literature Across Cultures. Gilbert H. Muller, John A. Williams. McGraw-Hill, Inc., (1994): 849-854.
3. Abdul Muttaleb, Fuad. A Short Way to Short Story. India: Ahad Publication, 2016. Print. Litcharts. “Tradition vs Progress”. Web. .10 Jan 2020.
4. Enotes. “What kinds of traditions, practices, and laws might “The Lottery” represent?”. Web.10 Jan 2020.
5. Middleburry Libraries. “Citation & Style Guide: MLA 7th Edition”. Web. 10 Jan 2020. Litcharts. “Tradition vs Progress”. Web. .10 Jan 2020.
6. Enotes. “What kinds of traditions, practices, and laws might “The Lottery” represent?”. Web.10 Jan 2020.

When Shirley Jackson’s chilling story ‘The Lottery’ was first published in 1948 in The New Yorker, it generated more letters than any work of fiction the magazine had ever published. Readers were furious, disgusted, occasionally curious, and almost uniformly bewildered.

The public outcry over the story can be attributed, in part, to The New Yorker’s practice at the time of publishing works without identifying them as fact or fiction. Readers were also presumably still reeling from the horrors of World War II. Yet, though times have changed and we all now know the story is fiction, ‘The Lottery’ has maintained its grip on readers decade after decade.

‘The Lottery’ is one of the most widely known stories in American literature and American culture. It has been adapted for radio, theater, television, and even ballet. The Simpsons television show included a reference to the story in its ‘Dog of Death’ episode (season three).

‘The Lottery’ is available to subscribers of The New Yorker and is also available in The Lottery and Other Stories, a collection of Jackson’s work with an introduction by the writer A. M. Homes. You can hear Homes read and discuss the story with fiction editor Deborah Treisman at The New Yorker for free.

‘The Lottery’ takes place on June 27, a beautiful summer day, in a small New England village where all the residents are gathering for their traditional annual lottery. Though the event first appears festive, it soon becomes clear that no one wants to win the lottery. Tessie Hutchinson seems unconcerned about the tradition until her family draws the dreaded mark. Then she protests that the process wasn’t fair. The ‘winner,’ it turns out, will be stoned to death by the remaining residents. Tessie wins, and the story closes as the villagers—including her own family members—begin to throw rocks at her.

The story achieves its terrifying effect primarily through Jackson’s skillful use of contrasts, through which she keeps the reader’s expectations at odds with the action of the story.

The picturesque setting contrasts sharply with the horrific violence of the conclusion. The story takes place on a beautiful summer day with flowers ‘blossoming profusely’ and the grass ‘richly green.’ When the boys begin gathering stones, it seems like typical, playful behavior, and readers might imagine that everyone has gathered for something pleasant like a picnic or a parade.

Just as fine weather and family gatherings might lead us to expect something positive, so, too, does the word ‘lottery,’ which usually implies something good for the winner. Learning what the ‘winner’ really gets is all the more horrifying because we have expected the opposite.

Like the peaceful setting, the villagers’ casual attitude as they make small talk— some even cracking jokes—belies the violence to come. The narrator’s perspective seems completely aligned with the villagers’, so events are narrated in the same matter-of-fact, everyday manner that the villagers use.

The narrator notes, for instance, that the town is small enough that the lottery can be ‘through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.’ The men stand around talking of ordinary concerns like ‘planting and rain, tractors and taxes.’ The lottery, like ‘the square dances, the teenage club, the Halloween program,’ is just another of the ‘civic activities’ conducted by Mr. Summers.

Readers may find that the addition of murder makes the lottery quite different from a square dance, but the villagers and the narrator evidently do not.

If the villagers were thoroughly numb to the violence—if Jackson had misled her readers entirely about where the story was heading—I don’t think ‘The Lottery’ would still be famous. But as the story progresses, Jackson gives escalating clues to indicate that something is amiss.

Before the lottery starts, the villagers keep ‘their distance’ from the stool with the black box on it, and they hesitate when Mr. Summers asks for help. This is not necessarily the reaction you might expect from people who are looking forward to the lottery.

It also seems somewhat unexpected that the villagers talk as if drawing the tickets is difficult work that requires a man to do it. Mr. Summers asks Janey Dunbar, ‘Don’t you have a grown boy to do it for you, Janey?’ And everyone praises the Watson boy for drawing for his family. ‘Glad to see your mother’s got a man to do it,’ says someone in the crowd.

The lottery itself is tense. People do not look around at each other. Mr. Summers and the men drawing slips of paper grin ‘at one another nervously and humorously.’

On first reading, these details might strike the reader as odd, but they can be explained in a variety of ways — for instance, that people are very nervous because they want to win. Yet when Tessie Hutchinson cries, ‘It wasn’t fair!’ readers realize there has been an undercurrent of tension and violence in the story all along.

As with many stories, there have been countless interpretations of ‘The Lottery.’ For instance, the story has been read as a comment on World War II or as a Marxist critique of an entrenched social order. Many readers find Tessie Hutchinson to be a reference to Anne Hutchinson, who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious reasons. (But it’s worth noting that Tessie doesn’t really protest the lottery on principle—she protests only her own death sentence.)

Regardless of which interpretation you favor, ‘The Lottery’ is, at its core, a story about the human capacity for violence, especially when that violence is couched in an appeal to tradition or social order.

Jackson’s narrator tells us that ‘no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box.’ But although the villagers like to imagine that they’re preserving tradition, the truth is that they remember very few details, and the box itself is not the original. Rumors swirl about songs and salutes, but no one seems to know how the tradition started or what the details should be.

The only thing that remains consistent is the violence, which gives some indication of the villagers’ priorities (and perhaps all of humanity’s). Jackson writes, ‘Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.’

One of the starkest moments in the story is when the narrator bluntly states, ‘A stone hit her on the side of the head.’ From a grammatical standpoint, the sentence is structured so that no one actually threw the stone—it’s as if the stone hit Tessie of its own accord. All the villagers participate (even giving Tessie’s young son some pebbles to throw), so no one individually takes responsibility for the murder. And that, to me, is Jackson’s most compelling explanation of why this barbaric tradition manages to continue.

The village lottery culminates in a violent murder each year, a bizarre ritual that suggests how dangerous tradition can be when people follow it blindly. Before we know what kind of lottery they’re conducting, the villagers and their preparations seem harmless, even quaint: they’ve appointed a rather pathetic man to lead the lottery, and children run about gathering stones in the town square. Everyone is seems preoccupied with a funny-looking black box, and the lottery consists of little more than handmade slips of paper. Tradition is endemic to small towns, a way to link families and generations. Jackson, however, pokes holes in the reverence that people have for tradition. She writes that the villagers don’t really know much about the lottery’s origin but try to preserve the tradition nevertheless.

The villagers’ blind acceptance of the lottery has allowed ritual murder to become part of their town fabric. As they have demonstrated, they feel powerless to change—or even try to change—anything, although there is no one forcing them to keep things the same. Old Man Warner is so faithful to the tradition that he fears the villagers will return to primitive times if they stop holding the lottery. These ordinary people, who have just come from work or from their homes and will soon return home for lunch, easily kill someone when they are told to. And they don’t have a reason for doing it other than the fact that they’ve always held a lottery to kill someone. If the villagers stopped to question it, they would be forced to ask themselves why they are committing a murder—but no one stops to question. For them, the fact that this is tradition is reason enough and gives them all the justification they need.

Villagers persecute individuals at random, and the victim is guilty of no transgression other than having drawn the wrong slip of paper from a box. The elaborate ritual of the lottery is designed so that all villagers have the same chance of becoming the victim—even children are at risk. Each year, someone new is chosen and killed, and no family is safe. What makes “The Lottery” so chilling is the swiftness with which the villagers turn against the victim. The instant that Tessie Hutchinson chooses the marked slip of paper, she loses her identity as a popular housewife. Her friends and family participate in the killing with as much enthusiasm as everyone else. Tessie essentially becomes invisible to them in the fervor of persecution. Although she has done nothing “wrong,” her innocence doesn’t matter. She has drawn the marked paper—she has herself become marked—and according to the logic of the lottery, she therefore must die.

Tessie’s death is an extreme example of how societies can persecute innocent people for absurd reasons. Present-day parallels are easy to draw, because all prejudices, whether they are based on race, sex, appearance, religion, economic class, geographical region, family background, or sexual orientation, are essentially random. Those who are persecuted become “marked” because of a trait or characteristic that is out of their control—for example, they are the “wrong” sex or from the “wrong” part of the country. Just as the villagers in “The Lottery” blindly follow tradition and kill Tessie because that is what they are expected to do, people in real life often persecute others without questioning why. As Jackson suggests, any such persecution is essentially random, which is why Tessie’s bizarre death is so universal.

Shirley Jackson was born on the 14th of December, in 1916, in San Francisco, California. She was a bright daughter of Leslie Jackson and Geraldine. Her parents were conservative country-club people, who raised their children in luxuries. Shirley’s childhood world was ruined by her vapid mother who was disappointed by her daughter as Shirley was accidentally conceived. Her mother went through a failed abortion. Thus, her life was ostensibly rebellious against her cruel and emotionless mother, who favored her brother more than her. Her criticism and hatred corroded her life to an extent that she expressed these fears in most of her writings.

Shirley Jackson started her educational journey at Burlingame High School, where she did well. She also played violin in the school orchestra. Later, during her senior years, her family moved to New York, where he attended Brighton High School and completed a diploma in 1934. Then, she attended a private research university, the University of Rochester, but she remained unhappy in her classes. This dissatisfaction led to her transfer to Syracuse University, where she flourished both socially and creatively. She completed her bachelor’s degree in journalism and became an active member of the literary magazine. Her first story, “Janice” was also published in her university’s magazine.

During her stay at Syracuse University, Shirley Jackson met Stanley Edgar Hyman, an American literary critic. Both developed a love for each other and tied a knot in 1940. The couple had four children. Since both were enthusiastic readers, therefore, they set up their own library consisting of approximately 25,000 books.

Shirley Jackson suffered numerous health problems including asthma, joint pain, severe anxiety, fainting spells, and exhaustion. Severe bouts of depression led her to proper psychiatric consultations. However, the situation became more critical when she was diagnosed with colitis, which added further to her miseries. Despite all these obstacles, she continued to publish her works including her final gothic mystery novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle. She breathed her last in 1965.

Although Shirley Jackson led a traumatic life, all those obstacles did not impede her writing abilities. Her dark childhood along with other life experiences enabled her to express her feelings and ideas on paper. Her literary career started with the publication of her first short story, ‘Janice.” Later, in 1954, she published her first novel, The Bird’s Nest, followed by two more successful publications, The Sundial and The Haunting of Hill House. During her lifetime, she produced many short stories, novels, memoirs, and children’s stories. Some of them include The Witchcraft of Salem Village, Famous Sally, Life among the Savages: Un Uneasy Chronicle, “Louisa, Please Come Home,” Come Along with Me, and The Road Through the Wall.

Shirley Jackson stands among the influential figures of world literature. With her unique style, she has beautifully portrayed her ideas in her literary pieces. Her distinctive literary style relies largely on a blend of foreshadowing, realistic fiction, irony, and presentation of malevolent, imprisoning power of her own fears. Her early works are often about the people being persecuted and oppressed by narrow-minded communities. However, in her later attempts, she focused primarily on the “demons of mind”; the evil that hunts its victim from within like she expressed in two of her major works, “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House. The persona that she focused in her works was witty, powerful, and imposing. Although she is widely known and praised for horror and suspense, yet she possessed a distinct ability to write comfortably in a variety of genres. Often, Shirley Jackson beautifully clubbed the horrific with the comic, comedy grounding the terror. The recurring themes in most of her literary pieces stand darker aspects of human nature, death, and evil.

Shirley Jackson left a profound impact on global literature and even after many years of her demise, she continues to be adored for her unique expression. Her witty ideas, along with distinct literary qualities, were applauded by the audience, critics, and other fellow writers. Many modern writers praise her work as Stephen King has called The Haunting of Hill House one of the two “great novels of the supernatural in the last hundred years.” Other authors like Joyce Carol Oates, Ezra Pound, and Neil Gaiman also sing in her praise. Her masterpieces provided the principles of writing to the succeeding generations. She successfully documented her ideas about marriage, power, and love in her writings that even today writers try to copy her style to win early success.