45 pages • 1 hour read
Shirley JacksonThe Lottery
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1948A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Literary Devices
Situational Irony
Typically, winning a lottery involves receiving a prize. However, details suggest that winning this lottery is the opposite. An early hint is that Mr. Summers, who presides over the lottery, also oversees the annual Halloween event. The Lottery begins pleasantly, with a description of a lovely summer day. Townsfolk gather in the square, preparing for some sort of festival or event. Their conversations are relaxed and matter-of-fact, as if the forthcoming event were a mere formality in their lives, no more or less important than discussing how the weather might affect this year’s crops. In fact, they’ve gathered for the annual slaughter of a randomly chosen resident. The casualness, both of the characters’ actions and the story’s mood, belies the shocking ending. The nonchalant mood of the story slowly darkens; as the lottery progresses, the townsfolk become quieter and more somber. This slow shift in mood is meant to inspire in the reader a growing sense of dread as the story moves relentlessly toward its horrifying conclusion.
Exposition
The author implies things about the townspeople through her descriptions of them. On the morning of the lottery, an important event, the women appear, “wearing faded house dresses and sweaters” (292). Ordinarily, people will dress up for important occasions; the old and worn nature of their clothing indicate that the farming town isn’t very prosperous, or that people treat the event casually—or, ominously, that more practical clothing will be needed at the event’s finale.
The lottery “could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner” (291). This implies that the event is, at worst, an inconvenience for many of the townsfolk, or perhaps something to be gotten through as quickly as possible. Noon dinner, which simply means lunch, is an old expression that bespeaks an old-fashioned town, perhaps one tradition-bound enough to persist with a ritual sacrifice long past its usefulness.
The opening scenes hint at the normality of the occasion. Men talk shop; women gossip; children play. On being called together to begin the event, one child scampers away: “Bobby Martin ducked under his mother’s grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place between his father and his oldest brother” (292). These vignettes make clear that the people involved are normal, familiar types.
As the lottery homes in on the Hutchinson family—one of whom, by random chance, must be chosen as a sacrifice—the eldest son, Billy, “his face red and his feet overlarge, nearly knocked the box over as he got a paper out” (300). This vignette suggests an awkward teenager, compliant yet self-conscious about his role in a ceremony that will kill one of the members of his family.
In a note of dark humor, the author early on makes reference, six times, to the stool on which the lottery box rests. Some of the mentions appear to be gratuitous. The word “stool” has a second meaning—feces. The author seems to signal that this second meaning describes the event appropriately.
Symbolism
Some of the characters have names that symbolize aspects of the story. At first, these names appear random, but their symbolic meaning becomes clear as the story advances. Mr. Summers, the town official who conducts the lottery, is named for the time of year during which the story takes place. The name also suggests his sunny disposition; this creates a tension between the man’s cheerful personality and the gruesome job over which he presides.
Other symbolic surnames include Mr. Graves, the gruesomely monikered postmaster who knows the names of everyone in town and helps officiate at the deadly lottery. Old Man Warner, the oldest resident, “warns” a neighbor that the decision of a nearby town to abandon the lottery is a bad thing, and that the old ways are tried and true. Mrs. Hutchinson, who “wins” the lottery and is stoned to death, brings to mind an historical person, Anne Hutchinson, who was banished from her colonial New England town for heresy. The Delacroix family name—in French, it means “of the cross”—is mentioned only briefly, but it reminds the reader that Tessie’s death, meant to appease the heavens and assure a good crop, echoes the execution of Jesus, whose death similarly was intended to absolve the world of its sins.
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