Comparing Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and O. Henry’s "A Municipal Report"

The residents of a certain undisclosed town in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and the nameless narrator found in O. Henry’s “A Municipal Report” are portrayed with completely different attributes by their respective creators. While Jackson introduces her readers to an “everyday” crowd of neighborly villagers in their preparation for a lottery, O. Henry presents his audience to a man who appears to be emotionally detached from society. Nevertheless, the outward appearances of the characters in these two texts utterly misrepresent who they truly are: the seemingly innocuous lottery in Jackson’s short story is in reality a gruesome gathering for the town’s annual stoning whereas O. Henry’s narrator is not as aloof as he portrays himself to be. Although such extreme contrasts between appearance and reality are understandably confusing — multiple readings of the texts are required for the readers to fully appreciate what is going on in the stories — they ultimately help accentuate the crucial theme of good and evil that is prevalent in both “The Lottery” and “A Municipal Report.”

In her short story “The Lottery,” Jackson wastes no time in helping her readers adjust themselves to the unfamiliar world that she has created. Indeed, one of the very first things Jackson does in her narration is to provide her readers with a very detailed depiction of the interactions amongst the town’s children: “[t]he children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play . . .” (351). By utilizing the familiar imagery of juvenile mischief during the carefree days of summer vacation ...

... middle of paper ...

...syche can truly be. Whereas “The Lottery” illuminates how deeply ingrained evil is in all aspects of humanity, “A Municipal Report” demonstrates how the power of good can be awakened even in the hearts of those who are deeply pessimistic about society. When these seemingly incompatible works of literature are viewed side by side, they ultimately show the readers that human emotions cannot be so readily grouped into categories. On the contrary, as the townspeople of “The Lottery” and the narrator of “A Municipal Report” have clearly demonstrated, good, evil, and everything in between can manifest themselves in many surprising ways.

Works Cited

Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” 351-359.

O. Henry. “A Municipal Report.” The Gift of the Magi and Other Short Stories. Ed. Stanley

Appelbaum and Shane Weller. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1992. 55-67.