The Lottery takes the classic theme of man’s inhumanity to man and gives it an additional twist: the randomness inherent in brutality. As Ruth Franklin, who is currently writing a biography of Shirley Jackson observes, And each concerned ordinary citizens engaging willingly and even proudly in inhuman acts of evil. Controversy attached itself to Arendt’s essays even more lastingly than to Jackson’s. Both were originally published in the New Yorker. Scholars and critics have drawn comparisons between Jackson’s publication of The Lottery and Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. “I resent being tricked into reading perverted stories like The Lottery.” There were phone calls, too, though The New Yorker didn’t keep a record of what was said, or how many calls came in.

Will you please send us a brief explanation before my husband and I scratch right through our scalps trying to fathom it?” Others called the story “outrageous,” “gruesome,” and “utterly pointless.” “I will never buy The New Yorker again,” one reader from Massachusetts wrote. In one such letter, Miriam Friend, a librarian-turned-housewife, wrote “I frankly confess to being completely baffled by Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. The Lottery appeared three weeks after Jackson’s agent had submitted it, and there was instant controversy: Hundreds of readers cancelled their subscriptions and wrote letters expressing their rage and confusion about the story. The shift amongst the townspeople from the lighthearted conviviality to cold-blooded stoning is shocking and deeply unsettling.Īs Erin McCarthy tells us, Jackson’s story ignited an instant controversy. Jackson unfolds the story gradually, and the atmosphere of celebration on lottery day helps hide the dark turn The Lottery ultimately takes in its final paragraphs. It is a powerful and disturbing story about a small and happy New England town where once every year the residents select lots to choose one person who will be stoned, presumably to death. Shirley Jackson published her story The Lottery in the New Yorker this week 66 years ago, on June 26, 1948.

The Banality of Evil and Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' 06-28-2014

The lottery plot