The timeliness of Shirley Jackson

An allegory exists in a no-place. The ahistorical setting is typically used to elevate a universal message about the human condition.

Post-war literature, however, is not as crude, but is certainly interpreted that way in the mainstream consciousness. The anthropomorphism of George Orwell’s Animal Farm is framed in the popular imagination as an anti-Communism screed, ignoring Orwell’s commitment to democratic socialism.

Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery published around the same time as Orwell’s most famous works is a warning on the excesses of collectivism. That the mob to be feared is ourselves, unless we embrace critical thinking in the form of an individualism. Excessive conformity is the result of a social inertia.

Jackson is enjoying a bit of a cultural renaissance recently. TV and film adaptations of her work are very popular and this year a biopic titled Shirley was released starring Elisabeth Moss.

Yet The Lottery is more complex than the allegory model. While no year or setting is documented (it happens on June 27, but why is beyond me), there are representations to the passing of historical time.

Mr. Warner who has lived through seventy-seven lotteries is critical of the younger generation calling for an end to the ritual, asserting the need for a good harvest that is the result of the lottery. As time passes by the tradition is further under threat.

The villagers are most devoted to the theatricality of the ritual. Male heads of households are the ones that pick on the behalf of their family; women who are married off are part of new households. Patriarchy is strictly adhered to. Death is conducted via a stoning.

However, the material element of the tradition is freely updated. Paper draws replace woodchips. The box is losing its colour “no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side” and “in some places faded or stained”.

There is no one location for the box’s storage, going from a barn, to the postmaster to the grocery store. Now it is with the coal company owner Mr. Summers, the conductor of the ceremony. The physical box does not attract the same reverence as the performance.

While taking place annually, villagers remark that the tradition seemingly comes round quicker each year.

“Seems like there’s no time at all between lotteries any more,” Mrs. Delacroix said to Mrs. Graves in the back row. “Seems like we go through with the last one only last week.”

“Time sure goes fast,” Mrs. Graves said.

It’s an impressionistic feel of life speeding up. The coal company is the bedrock of the community, in the form of Mr. Summers sworn in as the administrator of a lottery as though he was the US president. The pastoral setting is under threat from industralisation and is seeing a growing population.

It’s the tragedy of Tessie Hutchinson that this speeding up of time reaches an apotheosis. Tessie decries her husband’s picking of the black dotted-paper as himself not given enough time to choose (as though extra time in a random draw would have any consequence).

Her husband obliges, despite Tessie’s protestations. So he, Tessie and his children now draw in the second round, only for Tessie to select the paper with the black dot. Interestingly, she is shown to snatch the piece of paper, as though quickly drawing would help her chances this time.

Tessie is subsequently stoned to death. Before she pleas that the process has not been done correctly. Her criticism is purely procedural until perhaps the final line:

“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.

Both “fair” and “right” can be read in multiple ways. Both can function as synonyms for the criticism of the procedure. Or it may be that “fair” only refers to the operation, while “right” explains the higher moral question of the lottery (or vice versa).

The deliberate ambiguity serves to affirm the timelessness of the village, halting the rapidly shrinking time between each ceremony for an opportunity to reflect (that is however missed). It is a self-reflection that is beyond the villagers, but Jackson hints is the solution in her didacticism.

Indeed, the irony of the missed opportunity is made clear when Mr. Warner fires back at the new generation raising questions about the tradition.

“Next thing you know, they’ll want be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live like that for a while.”

Even in front of his own eyes he remains unaware that Tessie, and others before her, are literally buried inside a new cave of the villagers’ own creation.

Today the social milieu is to be distrustful of universal messages. Postmodernism has taken care of that over the many decades. Yet those conclusions on the human condition linger on in the popular imagination.

Bourgeoisie ideology will forever be distrustful of collectivist messages and seek to lift them to preserve power. Yet as The Lottery shows, even allegories cannot escape history, and the more history seeps in, the less we can conclude these are lessons for us all. A seemingly simple story is buried under its own material conditions.