Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery": Historical/Cultural Context

Historical & Cultural Context of "The Lottery"

“Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient ritual in the present and

in my own village to shock the story’s readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.”

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson

June 27th 1948... A story of a village innocently partaking in an old tradition: the Lottery.

Jennifer Assaf

Tammy Na

Heidi Duong

Marian Sagoe

Society and Culture in 1948

• place written: Vermont
• year, 1948.
• reverting to conformism: US was scrambling for conformity.
• WHY? Finding comfort in the past/tradition.
• Connection to “The Lottery”: Everyone conforms to the town square like sheep every year on June 27 for the lottery.
• feminism: women entered the workforce to replace men that left to fight in the war = taste of independence.
• In the story:
• man of every household picks the lottery
• the woman only takes part if the man can not attend
• “Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand ... [and] held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd”
• published June 27, 1948
• day she was referring to in the story.
• reaction was negative

Jackson's reaction to reception of story

Historical Aspects Behind "The Lottery"

More on Events of the Holocaust

• Appeasement treaty:
• Afraid to go into war again
• majority of society okay with treaty
• Pre-Allies thought Hitler wouldn't do anything unless provoked (complacent)
• Mass genocide in plain sight
• 6 million Jews including Gypsies and homosexuals.
• Hitler’s “final solution” to purify the German race from alien “threats”.

More on the Atomic Bombs

• August 1945
• 90,000-140,000 people died directly from Hiroshima, and 60,000-80,000 people died from Nagasaki
• 87,000 more died from radiation
• The US didn't really debate on use of atomic bombs
• Many Americans weren't concerned with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

• The Holocaust: mass genocide; appeasement
• In the story: normal, otherwise nice people, could allow something like the Holocaust.
• atomic bomb: August 6 1945, US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. 3 days later they dropped bomb on Nagasaki
• In propelling bombs=> propelling rocks; lack of opposition against death of innocent people, by chance
• Japanese Internment camps: attempt to thwart Japanese spies
• inability to see inhumanity behind camps/lottery
• mob mentality

More on Japanese Internment Camps

• Placed Japanese immigrants/ people of Japanese ancestry in camps
• US believed Japanese natives & people had loyalty to their homeland = possible Japanese spies.
• US was advocating for the release of the Jewish people, but they were actually committing a similar crime against humanity.

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nuclear-attack-what-do>.

Steele, Diana. "America's Reaction to the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and

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<http://users.dickinson.edu/~history/product/steele/seniorthesis.htm>.

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