It’s also easy to spot the resonance in The Hunger Games, where names are pulled out of a box to decide who will be selected to fight to the death. We are less innocent now, and certainly less likely to believe, like so many of ‘The Lottery’s original readers, that such stoning rituals actually took place.īut the story is famously a stalwart of the American school syllabus, and even got a mention on The Simpsons episode Dog of Death, with Springfield’s inhabitants missing the point entirely and taking every available copy out of the library in an attempt to gain tips on winning the jackpot. And, as Warner says, ‘people ain’t the way they used to be’. However, in contrast to the vitriolic outpourings of the readers of 1948, a recent blog post on remarked: “I kind of knew where things were headed, since it has, after all, been 66 years and in that time, writers have continued to push boundaries.” True, if the story was published in The New Yorker today, the magazine’s readership might not be threatened with quite such a hit. Further, one early reader pondered whether The New Yorker’s editorial staff had become ‘tools of Stalin’, an interesting response to a story that, in its presentation of a society where everyone has an equal chance of being persecuted, can easily be seen as expressing anxieties over flaring Russian socialism. It’s impossible to know how much Jackson intended the story to be a comment on her contemporary society, but the biblical echo of sinners throwing stones was pertinent in the rubble of a world war for which America was blaming Germany even as it dealt with the aftermath of Hiroshima. The Lottery’s sparse, allegorical nature – and the fact that the village is unnamed, and could conceivably be anywhere – means it has been used over the past sixty years like a screen through which contemporary political and social events can be understood. Despite –or, perhaps, because of – her popularity Jackson only started to receive serious critical attention a decade after her death, but since this point critics have continually taken it upon themselves to fill in the gaps left by the author’s reticence. Exactly what it was that they understood, she never fully articulated, although it makes sense that a narrative which can easily be read as a criticism of the arbitrary persecution and scapegoating of a particular person – or people – by those in power might have ruffled a few segregationist feathers. She was coy on the meaning of her most famous work, although when it was banned by apartheid South Africa, she commented wryly that ‘at least they understand the story’. Jackson, whilst popular during her lifetime, was a reluctant interviewee. The story’s simple, fable-like prose style belies the dagger in its belly, like a child telling a secret it knows is incendiary but doesn’t fully understand. Whichever response is more inappropriate, the subversive nature of The Lottery was made clear. Some were confused, with one reader bellowing: “What happened to the paragraph that tells what the devil is going on?” Others politely enquired where such rituals took place, so that they could go and watch. Understandably, The Lottery, the most famous story in the some what overlooked oeuvre of Shirley Jackson, wasn’t well-received by The New Yorker’s post-war readers. The oldest resident of the village, he’s a symbol of tradition in a place where an annual lottery requires the villagers to pull pieces of paper out of a box, gradually eliminating contestants until the person who extracts the paper with a black spot is stoned to death. “People ain’t the way they used to be.”’ Old Man Warner is often seen as the lynchpin of a tale that caused ripples of shock amongst readers when it appeared in The New Yorker in 1948. ‘”It’s not the way it used to be” Old Man Warner says clearly. One of the residents of the fictional village where the story is set breaks the hushed silence. As one of the most famous and controversial short stories in the English language reaches its climax, a hand slips into a black box and draws out the last slip of paper.
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