The Lottery

"Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon."

"The Lottery" is a horror short story written by Shirley Jackson, first published in The New Yorker in 1948 and included in her collection The Lottery and Other Stories the following year.

It's June 27th. A small American village of roughly three hundred people has prepared for this day as if it were another celebration, like a square dance or a Halloween pageant. It is time for the town's annual lottery, which consists of selecting a family, then an individual, from the slips of paper concealed inside a splintery black box which has been used many times before. The winner – in this instance, a woman – is surprised to be selected and protests that she really doesn't deserve the prize, but the whole community insists on giving it to her. After all, this is their annual tradition, and a good harvest is at stake. Cue the stones.

It would be any other quaint story if it weren't for the heavy symbolism. The story is Shirley Jackson's meditation on the pointlessness of violence, the folly of blindly adhering to tradition, and the potential for inhumanity inside every person and community. Jackson received copious hate mail for it, readers unsubscribed from The New Yorker in disgust, and the story was banned in the Union of South Africa (the precursor to modern-day South Africa). Jackson famously responded to the latter by observing – in an implicit swipe at that country's then-extant apartheid system – that they had at least understood the point of the story.

Probably best known today as a staple of American junior high/middle school literature classes, it has been adapted into many kinds of media, such as radio, one-act plays, various short films, a 1969 ballet, and a successful 1996 Made-for-TV Movie. There have also been Shout Outs in other media, including in episodes of The Simpsons, South Park, and Squidbillies.

Read it here, as well as letters sent in in response here.

Not to be confused with the completely unrelated post-apocalyptic TV series The Lottery.

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Tropes featured in the short story:

• Affably Evil: It's not entirely clear whether the townsfolk count more under this than Faux Affably Evil below. The whole scene has a very polite, middle-class Americana sort of feel about it, and it's heavily implied that some find at least some parts of the Lottery distasteful (and Old Man Warner is certainly cynical about its meaning) and wouldn't do it under any other circumstances, but continue to do it here because, well, it's tradition. To some readers, this thought makes them more creepy.
• Ambiguous Time Period: There's no indication what year the story is set.
• Appeal to Tradition: The entire reason the Lottery continues is blind devotion to tradition. The residents even consider it horrible that neighbouring towns have given up on the Lottery, since they see it as throwing away their cultural traditions.
• Asshole Victim: Tessie proves herself to be one. Not only does she have no immediate objections to the Lottery's existence up until her family is put on the chopping block, but she also tries to drag her own daughter into the drawing to improve her chances of survival. Even her plaints of "It's not right! It's not fair!" are all because she was selected. Had it been anyone else, she would have murdered them without once considering it wrong.
• Babies Make Everything Better: In a twisted way — having a large family means your own odds of surviving the Lottery will improve. (It also means you might have to murder one of your own children so you can live, but the households in this story seem okay with that).
• Black Spot: The method of selecting the winner of the Lottery is drawing slips of paper, one of which is marked with a literal black spot.
• City with No Name: The town is not named, and the location is merely somewhere rural enough to depend on agriculture.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: The townspeople. They assemble for the Lottery just because it's traditional, and once they themselves are safe, they dismiss the protests of the likely victim (who can see the noose tightening around her neck) as the plaints of a Sore Loser.
• Cruel Twist Ending: The Lottery is the town's way of picking their annual sacrifice, and Tessie is this year's winner.
• Culture Justifies Anything: "There's always been a Lottery."
• The Cynic: Old Man Warner makes sour comments about proceedings the entire time, though he never actually suggests that the town should drop or change their annual tradition.
• Dirty Coward: Tessie tries to bring her daughter into the final drawing in order to better her chances, despite the fact that the daughter is lumped in with her husband's family.
• Downer Ending: Tessie, this year's Lottery winner, is stoned to death without remorse by the townspeople and members of her own family, and everyone will return to their normal lives as if nothing happened, with no signs that the tradition of having a Lottery will ever fully fade out of the towns culture.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Downplayed. The townsfolk are noticeably relieved when the chosen sacrifice is one of the adult Hutchinsons, rather than one of the children. However, the fact children are entered anyway strongly indicates they still would've murdered a child, or even a baby, if they had "won".
• Evil Old Folks: Whilst not exactly evil, Old Man Warner is one of the Lottery's staunchest supporters (even though he's cynical about its actual role). He thinks that the other towns who don't do this sort of thing any more are all a pack of fools. Although he does think they're doing the ceremony bit wrong.
• Fair-Weather Friend: All of the townspeople are revealed to be this to Tessie Hutchinson, as they initially are cordial with her and even joke with her when she arrives at the drawing, but turn against her as soon as her family's name is drawn and she is chosen as the Lottery "winner." The story ends with them mercilessly stoning her to death despite her protests.
• Faux Affably Evil: The majority of the townsfolk. Friendly, seemingly normal people... who don't bat an eyelid at stoning someone to death.
• Fictional Traditions: The titular lottery, in which a random citizen is chosen every year to be a Human Sacrifice for good harvest, being stoned to death by the rest of the townsfolk.
• Folk Horror: The townspeople are engaging in a yearly ritual sacrifice to insure a good harvest, to who or what is never stated.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Stones are mentioned as early as the second paragraph, well before the ending that reveals what the stones will be used for.
  • Tessie Hutchinson, the villager who ends up being the sacrifice, gets quite a bit of focus that serves to set up what her ultimate fate will be.
• Grumpy Old Man: Old Man Warner, who grumbles that the Lottery isn't what it used to be and that other towns have given up lotteries.
• Harmful to Minors: The entire village population, both adults and children, participates in stoning the unlucky victim to death every year.
• Human Sacrifice: The titular lottery is done to choose a sacrifice to ensure a good harvest, though most of the townsfolk continue to do it because it's tradition, without any indication they know what the tradition was originally for.
• Jerkass: The majority of the townsfolk in the story are not nice people.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Old Man Warner's laundry list of complaints against society actually come off as somewhat reasonable, considering what it's implied the mayor is using the Lottery as an excuse to do.
• Karma Houdini: The other townspeople suffer no consequences for their actions. Even this year's victim must have helped kill dozens of past 'winners' without repercussions.
• Kids Are Cruel: The young children are the only townsfolk that seem excited about the Lottery and get their stones stacked and ready before the drawing begins.
• Lack of Empathy: The residents of the town have become so desensitized to their yearly tradition of stoning lottery winners to death that they don't care about the feelings of the lottery winner at all and proceed to mercilessly brutalize her anyway with the full intent on returning to their normal lives afterward as if nothing happened.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Tessie Hutchinson tries to enter her own daughter and son-in-law into the lottery to decrease her chances of being chosen. The story ends with her being chosen as the "winner" and stoned to death by the townspeople, presumably including those two.
• Like Reality, Unless Noted: There's no indication anything in the universe of the story is different from the real world, except that there is an annual ceremony where one random person is picked to be ritually sacrificed in numerous American towns and it's been going on for so long no one even remembers when it started.
• Lottery of Doom: Whoever is the unlucky person to draw the "winning" paper is stoned to death by the rest of the town as a Human Sacrifice to ensure a good harvest.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Mr. and Mrs. Delacroix, which means "of the cross" in French.
  • There's also a family named Graves, whose patriarch helps run the Lottery.
  • Old Man Warner, who keeps complaining that the Lottery "isn't what it used to be", is perfectly happy to let it proceed.
• Moral Myopia: Tessie has no problem with the Lottery happening and is even eager to participate, until her family is chosen.
• Non-Indicative Name: Many of the townsfolk have names with pleasant, harmless connotations. The Lottery Official is named Mr. Summers, for example.
• Nobody Ever Complained Before: Subverted. Tessie protests vigorously that it isn't fair, but the other townspeople just call her a sore loser... as they must have done every other time.
• Obliviously Evil: The townsfolk are so desensitized to the yearly Lottery and so blind in their devotion to tradition that genuinely don't understand it's completely abhorrent and pointlessly cruel to stone a random person to death for no good reason.
• Offing the Offspring: The setup of the Lottery means that parents might join the town in killing their own children. When the Hutchinson family is chosen, Tessie tries to claim her married daughter and son-in-law as part of the family, to improve her own odds.
• Original Position Fallacy: No one strenuously objects to the Lottery except the winner. The rest of the townspeople actually get more comfortable with proceedings once it's clear that someone else will win.
• Peer Pressure Makes You Evil: Babies smiling as they pick up pebbles to throw. Mothers putting stones in their kids' hands.
• Regularly Scheduled Evil: The Lottery takes place on June 27th.
• Self-Made Orphan: When Tessie is chosen by the lottery, someone gives little Davy a few pebbles so he can join the villagers in stoning his mother to death.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: On the cynical side. Every line Old Man Warner speaks is a complaint against society.
• Take Me Instead: Conspicuously averted. Not even Tessie's husband tries to step in and die for her when she is chosen by the Lottery.
• Tomato Surprise: Everyone in the story knows what the lottery's 'prize' is except for the reader. The story spends most of its time detailing the events that happen on lottery day, highlighting just how mundane it is for this town. It isn't until the very end of the story when Tessie is picked that the lottery is revealed to be a Lottery of Doom.
• Town with a Dark Secret: It's just a small American town like any other...that just so happens to ritualistically kill someone every year. Dialogue implies this town isn't the only one to do it, so it's likely not a secret in this fictional setting.
• Uncanny Village: At the beginning of the story, you'd think the town was located somewhere in Arcadia. About halfway through the story we start getting hints that the Lottery may be something darker than 'just a tradition...' It's more like Lovecraft Country, and was based on her own town.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: A possible way to read the residents of the town, given that participating in the Lottery does not seem to be something that anyone is excited to do, but rather something that they believe must be done for some greater purpose of the town, even if no one knows for sure what that purpose is anymore.
• Would Hurt a Child: The youngest person seen taking part in the Lottery is a tiny toddler who needs to be coaxed up to the box and requires a responsible adult to hold his paper for him. While the villagers seem a little relieved when he's not selected, there's no question of what would have happened if he won...
• Writers Cannot Do Math: The town is said to have about 300 people. Given that the Lottery ensures at least one person will die per year, it is impossible for this tradition to keep going without the entire town eventually stoning themselves into extinction (under the probable assumption no one's immigrating here and the likelihood the birth rate isn't strangely high). This may be part of the point though, considering how the story is meant the ridicule devotion to moronic traditions against common sense.

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