The tale begins pleasantly in a small, unnamed town. The day is "clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day," and the people are gathering the square, children first. "Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones," we're told -the first vague note of menace in the story. Soon, the adults arrive, joking, gossiping, and "speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes." This is Everytown, USA, Jackson implies. But something is off. The villagers are piling up rocks.
Then the lottery begins. One by one, the head of each household draws a slip of paper from the box. Casual dialogue and deadpan description mask a building sense of danger. Only the occasional unexplained reference hints at the macabre. "Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn will be heavy soon,'" says Old Man Warner. It seems that whatever is taking place has been going on since time immemorial.
One of the townspeople, Bill Hutchinson, draws the unlucky slip of paper. Bill, his wife, and their three children must now draw from the box in turn. This time, Bill's wife, Tessie, gets the marked paper. "All right, folks," says Mr. Summers, the man in charge, "Let's finish quickly."
It's only in the final short paragraphs of "The Lottery" that the story turns to outright horror. "The children had stones already," Jackson writes. "And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles." As the stones hit Tessie, she screams "It isn't fair, it isn't right." The story ends with six infamous words: "And then they were upon her."
WINNING THE LOTTERY
The editors at The New Yorker were taken aback when Jackson submitted "The Lottery," but they also appreciated its literary virtues. In the end, the decision to accept it was one vote shy of unanimous.
The public wasn't quite as accepting. People were outraged. The story's reception came as a surprise to Jackson. But mostly, she was appalled by the readers who wanted to know where they could find a lottery to watch themselves.
Good or bad, "The Lottery" had everyone talking. Shirley Jackson had made a name for herself in fiction. Her publisher, Farrar Strauss, hurried to capitalize on the buzz by publishing a collection of her work, The Lottery and Other Stories. To promote the book, Strauss circulated rumors that Jackson had used voodoo to break the leg of publishing rival Alfred J. Knopf, billing her as a practicing witch. In truth, Jackson was known to dabble in mysticism and the occult. She read tarot cards and collected books on witchcraft and magic.
Today, the rumors surrounding Jackson's life and the vitriol over her short story have been largely forgotten. What remains is "The Lottery" itself -the paradigm of a perfectly crafted narrative. While the tale begins on a sunny, summer day, it builds at a ferocious pace, from daydream to nightmare. The writing is tight and compelling, and the story is impossible to forget. As author Jonathon Lethem puts it, "It now resides in the popular imagination as an archetype."