606 Jackson, shirley
should have been changed long ago. Our sympathy
for Tessie as the victim is furthered by the fact that
she is the only character who is individualized by
the author. Tessie shows up late to the ritual, setting
herself apart physically from her society and drawing
our attention to her, and then jokes with the crowd
about leaving dishes in the sink, which as a moment
of light comedy, allows greater identification with
her than with any other character. The fact that Tes-
sie’s final words are, “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right!” serves
to underscore her role as an individual victim of her
society.
On the other hand, Tessie’s behavior—this year
and in the past—is not that of an innocent victim.
“The Lottery” is an engaging story, in part because
it shockingly demonstrates the power society can
exert over an individual’s morality. Although we
see her as a victim, it is tragically true that Tessie
Hutchinson would have unthinkingly stoned any
other member of her village were they to have drawn
the marked slip of paper. In fact, one has to assume
that she has participated willingly in the stoning of
another individual each and every year. Although we
feel sorry for her having been selected this year, her
victimhood is complicated by the reality that, until
today, she was part of the society that was enacting
a cruel fate on another individual.
Part of the terrible power a society can wield over
an individual resides in how quickly it can make a
single person do something in the name of self-
preservation that they would never do otherwise.
Tessie shows this after her husband, Bill, is found
holding the marked paper. Tessie exclaims “There’s
Don and Eva . . make them take their chance!” Eva
is Tessie’s eldest, married daughter, and in a frantic
effort to save her own life, Tessie suggests that Don
and Eva should be included in her family’s draw-
ing of lots. Even though she knows this would be
against the rules of the lottery, she offers it up in a
last-ditch effort to increase her own chance of sur-
vival. Thus, we see that, despite garnering our sym-
pathy as a victim of a cruel social practice, Tessie is
not without fault. Whereas, generally, being part of
a society bestows benefits on individuals, “The Lot-
tery” reverses this expected dynamic and shows how
viciously selfish even a mother can become toward
her own children when her life depends on it.
Whether we are to blame Tessie’s society for
forcing her to protect herself in this seemingly self-
ish manner, or whether we are to look to Tessie as
the locus of her own moral control, is the core of
the moral quandary that the story asks us to engage.
That Tessie embodies aspects of both victim and
victimizer—in varying degrees depending on the
context—demonstrates the complex potentialities
of humans’ moral nature, and shows that such issues
are not easily resolved even though they are recur-
rent problems we all face as individual agents living
in a social world.
David Michelsontradition in “The Lottery”
In many respects, the central theme of “The Lottery”
is tradition. While tradition is commonly thought
of positively as social glue that holds families and
communities together, Shirley Jackson’s story offers
a dark reminder of the dangers of following tradi-
tional practices uncritically.
The opening paragraph informs us that the lot-
tery occurs in many towns. Although “in some towns
there were so many people that the lottery took two
days and had to be started on June 26th” the shared
time of year suggests that a popular, recurring tradi-
tion is about to unfold. To normalize the lottery as a
stable convention of village life, Jackson tells us that
the early summer ritual is conducted by the same
man every year—Mr. Summers—who also oversees
other aspects of traditional life such as “the square
dances, the teen-age club, the Halloween program.”
The conventional nature of the lottery is under-
scored further by the author’s detailed description
of the items involved in the ritual, and the villagers’
specific reactions to changing them. Even though
the “original paraphernalia for the lottery has been
lost long ago,” the townspeople still use an old, rick-
ety box for drawing slips of paper. The box is older
than the oldest man in the village, and any discus-
sion of making a new box is met with disapproval, as
“no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was
represented by the black box.” Affinity for what the
box represents is motivated, in part, by a traditional
“story” that recounts how the current box contains
pieces of the original box used by the founders who
“settled down to make a village here.” One might