The Lottery By Shirley Jackson Techniques

Shirley Jackson’s Narrative and Stylistic Techniques Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco on December 14, 1916 (Allen 1). She grew up near Burlingame, California, where she began writing short stories and poems as a teenager. Her family then moved east when she turned seventeen, and she went to The University of Rochester. After a year attending Rochester she withdrew in 1936, and spent her time practicing writing instead (1). She then was admitted to Syracuse University in 1937, where she published her first story, “Janice”. She was appointed to fiction editor of the campus humor magazine (1). She won a poetry contest at Syracuse where she met her future husband, an aspiring literary critic by the name of Stanley Edgar Hyman. Together,
Shirley and Stanley founded a literary magazine, Spectre, in which Stanley was the editor. They both graduated in 1940 and soon after moved to Greenwich Village in New York (1). Shirley began writing without fail every day. Her stories were published in The New Republic and The New York.
Her first of four children was then born. In 1944, “Come Dance with Me in Ireland”, one of Shirley’s stories, was chosen for Best American Short Stories (1). In 1945, Shirley and Stanley moved to an old house in North Bennington, Vermont, since Stanley was offered a teaching position at Bennington College (1). Shirley continued her daily writing while raising children and running a household. The Road Through the Wall, Shirley’s first novel, was published in 1948 (1). That same year The New Yorker published “The Lottery”, a story written by Shirley that yielded in the largest volume of mail ever received by the magazine. Most of the mail was full of hate. The book has now been published in many languages, read by dozens of high schools in the United States. In 1949 the Hyman family moved to Westport, Connecticut, so Stanley could commute to his new job on The New Yorker staff (1). Soon after Shirley’s second book, The Lottery or The Adventures of James Harris (a collection of short stories) was published. The Hyman family often got visits from poets, artists, composers and writers. National Book Award winning author Ralph Ellison stayed at the Hyman
home for several months while finishing Invisible Man. Jackson’s succession of gothic novels began in 1951 with the publication of Hangsaman and her “The Summer People” was chosen for Best American Short Stories (1). The Hymans moved back to North Bennington that same year. In 1953 Life Among the Savages, the first of two humorous family chronicles was published. She continued to write and publish many books, such as The Bird’s Nest, and Witchcraft of Salem Village (1). Her second family chronicle was Raising Demons, published in the late 1950s (1). Her best known novel, The Haunting of Hill House came out in 1959 (1). She received an Edgar Allen Poe Award for “Louisa, Please” in 1961 (1). Shirley then began to review children’s books for the New York Herald Tribune. She died on August 8, during an unexpected heart failure during her nap (1). After her death Stanley still continued to publish her stories. Shirley Jackson is a writer of strange, unsettling fiction.
Her story, “The Lottery” was published in the New Yorker in 1948 and is often regarded as satire of human behavior and social institutions (Votteler 248). This story exemplifies the central themes in Shirley’s fiction, which include the victimization of the individual by society, the presence of evil in life, and the tendency of people to be cruel and conformist. The victimization occurs when Tessie Hutchinson is stoned by her conformed society. Their conformity is shown when Old Man Warner remarks, “Nothing but trouble in that pack of young folks,” when Mrs. Adam tells him that some places have often rid of the lottery (Jackson 297). The satire of evil identified in this story is the willingness of people to collectively engage in aberrant behavior. Often Shirley’s stories are set in small towns and are characterized by casual events that fail to give a true notion of the disturbing events that take place throughout the course of the book. This is effective because the small towns highlight the cruel or evil situation. The plot of “The Lottery” is very simple. There is no conflict; the conflict does not appear between two tangible forces: nothing to choose between and no choice between good and evil. The plot does not develop through human struggle; the idea of death only occurs by chance (Votteler 250). Many of Shirley’s short stories have simple plots likewise, and the reader must decipher small actions to
understand the story. Suspense is hardly a factor in Shirley’s fiction since character interest in her stories is minimal (250). The reader never learns much about a character’s inner nature. Nothing distinguishes her characters from a group of 30,000 people. She does this to comment on society as a whole. Like in “The Lottery” where no character is described more than the next, and all come together to perform an evil act out of tradition and conformity. Due to the lack of characterization, Shirley uses allusions to illustrate the feelings of her characters. In “After You My Dear Alphonse,” published in 1943, Johnny and Boyd playfully use the phrase (also the title), “After you my dear Alphonse,” which is an allusion to Alphonse and Gaston, a popular American comic strip, the characters of which are overly polite to one another (“The Lottery and Other Stories Summary and Analysis” 1). The use of this phrase indicates that the two boys are unaffected by the views of the adult world. They are untouched by Mrs. Wilson’s bigotry even after the uncomfortable disruption caused by her racism. The allusion to Alphonse and Gaston itself is also ironic. The comic strip, again, is about two overly courteous men unable to complete any task. In “After You My Dear Alphonse,” however, Mrs. Wilson overcompensates for being racist by attempting to be overly polite and offering Boyd secondhand items, an exceptional example of situational irony. Her effort to be charitable only affirms her partiality. Shirley Jackson uses many stylistic techniques to affect the reader. In “The Lottery” she uses the contrast in her word choice to give readers a dramatic shock. The short story begins with Shirley describing a cheery atmosphere, “It was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming,” leading the reader to believe the story will be pleasant (Jackson 291). However, the story quickly transitions to evoke terror with more suspenseful words, such as in the phrase, “She held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her, ‘It isn’t fair,’ she said” (301). Shirley’s quick transitioning word choice indicates her point of the doubleness of the human spirit that is exemplified in the amiability of the neighbors and the cruel action they perform. In addition to word choice, the diction in “The Lottery” is simplistic and straight-forward, representing the apparent simplicity of the townspeople. Characters are often regarded to by their appearance, such as, “a tall boy”. The simplicity of the character is further acknowledged by the lines they speak, which are often unanswered questions such as , “Old Man Warner make it?” and “Watson boy drawing this year?” (295-296). The townspeople are presented with simplicity to make a point that this situation can occur in any town, and it once again allows for Shirley to comment on human nature. The author uses simple structure to describe the setting of her stories. In “After You My Dear Alphonse” Shirley starts the story by saying, “Mrs. Wilson was just taking the gingerbread out of the oven when she heard Johnny outside talking to someone,” (85). The sentence structure is primitive to present the widely-known setting. To Shirley domestic havens are not safe, the juxtaposition of what appears to be safe with what is in actuality harmful heightens the impact of the latter (“The Lottery and Other Stories Summary and Analysis” 1).