Death In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

“Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (132). Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a tale that showcases a strange yearly tradition within a small town where neither the children nor the elderly are exempt from participating. Throughout the story, Jackson lures readers into a false sense of serenity with her title where she then proceeds to illustrate a peculiar and perhaps merciless gathering of the townspeople participating in a bizarre annual lottery event. It is not surprising then that this short story could be considered barbaric and the title misleading.

The most brutal and barbaric part of the short story written by Jackson is the manner of death that is

For example, one of the characters, Jack Watson, is now old enough to participate in the lottery. However, instead of the crowd being nervous, Jack gets several comments such as “Good fellow, Jack” and “Glad to see your mother’s got a man to do it” in reference to how it is about time Jack stepped up and selected the slip of paper from the black box instead of making his mother do it for the both of them (129). Likewise, another set of characters that demonstrated the indifference felt about the loss of life are the Dunbars. Earlier in the story, the audience is told that Mr. Dunbar is not able to attend the lottery due to a broken leg. However, later in the story, Ms. Dunbar tells her oldest son not once, but twice to be ready to run home so he can convey to his father which individual won the lottery. This action that Ms. Dunbar makes her child perform displays not just how casually the lottery is treated, but also how eager some of the townspeople are about the results of the lottery. Overall, these two sets of characters and the events that surround them showcase how little the villager’s value life and how instead of being remorseful the townspeople treat the lottery life as if it is nothing more than a light-hearted

First, once Tessie Hutchison is chosen, it takes no time for the townspeople to turn on her. This can be seen by Tessie’s family members like her youngest child Dave who takes little time to find his own pebbles to be used in the killing of his own mother. Similarly, Mrs. Delacroix who had chatted with Tessie earlier in the story and seemed to be good friends with Tessie had little issues selecting “a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands” (132). Lastly, it can also be seen that most of the townspeople showed no remorse for killing someone. To demonstrate, even with Tessie pleading for her life, the only comments from the residents of this small town were to quicken their pace like Ms. Dunbar stating “Come on, hurry up” or Old Man Warner saying “ Come on, come on, everyone” and not one villager stood up for Tessie or showed any other actions of remorse (132). Ultimately, these last two actions continued to demonstrate how emotionless all of the townspeople are when it comes to brutally killing individuals, no matter what their previous relationship was to any of the characters and further demonstrates the truly barbaric nature of this