“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson opens on a warm June day in a town of about 300 people and describes an annual event in the town, a tradition that is apparently widespread among surrounding villages as well. Children arrive in the town square first and engage in “boisterous play.” Some of the boys create a “great pile of stones in one corner of the square.”
When the men of the village arrive they stand away from the stones, joke quietly, and smile instead of laugh. The women arrive next. As they join their husbands, they call to their children. One mother’s voice carries no weight, and it is her husband that commands Bobby Martin’s attention.
The event for which they gather is a lottery conducted by Mr. Summers, a neatly dressed, jovial business man with a wife but no children. Although many traditional customs associated with the lottery seemed to have been lost over time, Mr. Summers still has “a great deal of fussing to be done” before he declares the lottery open. He has created lists of households, their heads, and their members. He and Mr. Graves, the postmaster, have spent the previous night making up slips of paper to be placed in a shabby black box that has been used for the lottery for as long as Mr. Summers can remember.