Wake up and after woken up
--Interpretation of The Lottery
The short story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is told by a third-person omniscient narrator, who knows everything, but just give out kinds of information in order to wake readers up on specific aspects. In the article, the narrator seems objectively recording story, but in the meanwhile it spends hundreds of words in explaining the past of the lottery box, and slightly interprets characters with words like “nervously” and “reluctantly”. It would be normal to read “The lottery” as human nature, particularly the unusual calmness when killing people and selfishness stimulated by horror to death. However, to focus on human nature would be to ignore the community and society elements of the story. Specifically, how would a man be affected by their community, when and how should an individual to abandon the traditional customs or something.
On the beautiful forenoon of June 27th, the residents of a small unknown town gathered in the town square to conduct the lottery, with plenty of stones prepared. Children were playing and the adults were chatting. Mr. Summers, the host of the lottery, brings the black box into the ground, with the help of Mr. Graves, who brought a stool for the black box. Tessie Hutchison was almost late.Finally, the lottery began. Each one of the three hundred people of the village drew a piece of paper from the black box. Bill Hutchison drew a paper with a black dot on it unfortunately. His wife Tessie argued that her married daughters should also join the second lottery but failed. The second was held, with only five pieces of paper, one each for the members of Bill's family. Tessie drew the black dot. She screamed and protested that the drawing wasn't fair again but her neighbors just stoned her to death, to finish the stuff in a hurry. The antagonist must be the traditional superstition, which turns the community into a killing machine. Therefore following this perspective, Tessie Hutchison, the one killed by the antagonist, should be the protagonist. At least, she lift billows, among a pool of stagnant water.
An important idea, that Shirley Jackson try to convey to readers, is that most of us are blind when we shaped by the community and society. “The lottery” is a sudden shock to readers when it comes to the end. It’s more horrible when rereading the detail carefully. The Watson boy is old enough to draw for his mother but very nervous because his father was dead for the lottery; When the boys know they are going to kill a people, they just collected better stones. And the most worrying part comes to the little Hutchison boy getting his slip, not knowing what’s happening. Here, by the tremendous contrast, between the kid’s laughing and the death ticket, Shirley Jackson shows how merciless the community would be and by this, she’s waking readers up to think about how and how much would we be affected by the society. The power of the community is such strong, to cover the guilt of killing a baby, to cover the grief of losing relatives, to cover the fear of death. Instead of being heartless, Shirley Jackson also exposes the step how we inherit customs by generations mindlessly. The sight firstly started from children, who know nothing and just follow their parents. Similarly, their parents are told to conduct the lottery blindly in this way. What’s more, all it need to wipe out the doubt is to have an old man who keeps saying “pack of crazy fools”. However, even the old man doesn’t inherit it completely. The evidence is that many details of the rite were simplified or deleted and that almost none of them show respect the box for lottery. They just keep the black fake one and casually put it anywhere like “barn, post office and grocery”.
After reading this story, many readers may think about when and how should an individual to abandon the traditional customs or something. It seems that Shirley Jackson also answers the question and her answer is, waiting, or running away. In the story, the old insist and have no willing to change the situation; the kids easily get used to it and are too powerless to change; the adults are more hopeful but they just listen to the elders and focus on their work, without anyone who’s brave enough to be different and “someone gave little Davy Hutchinson a few pebbles. It’s impossible to abandon the lottery in this position. But still there is hope, which comes from “other towns”. Some of the residents said that other town has given up the lottery. Generally, when they found that the connection between lottery and bumper corn is weak or they heard the news that other place still have a good harvest without lottery, people got sway and finally give it up. Therefore, all those individuals need is to wait, waiting for the good news, waiting for the death of Old Man Warner. But if you cannot bear anymore and being too afraid to continue, the last choice is to run away, with the one who trusts you. But in the meanwhile, you should also pay a huge cost, which means giving up most of what you used to had, like houses, lands, and your lovely relatives who cannot go with you. Sadly, it’s easy to travel from a town to another but difficult between countries; it’s easy to make a doubt at a town but difficult to realize the trick played by the government. At least, we are fortunate to wake up ourselves by reading “The Lottery”, and Shirley Jackson also shows us a way to change the community—scare them by writing this kind of stories.