The Black Spot: Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"

There are two related myths about history. One concerns the evolution of time, the idea that time is constantly unfolding in advance of some final incarnation, like utopia. The other is that man, who exists in time, is constantly outpacing the primal aggressions and irrational impulses of his prehistoric and uncivilized origins.

Shirley Jackson's haunting tale, "The Lottery," deconstructs these myths, though without the hopeless pessimism we might expect from such a deconstruction.

The story is set in a small, nondescript village during an annual "lottery." Neighboring villages, we learn, have a similar tradition, but some have been doing away with it. While the townsfolk gather in the square to take part in this ritual, a group of boys is piling up stones, as though in preparation for a game of war. The village official who organizes the lottery produces a black wooden box filled with slips of paper, from which every adult male will take several pieces and distribute them to the members of his family. An old man, under whose steely gaze this ceremony has been watched and conducted for generations, remarks that the lottery has always yielded a good crop, a hint of the superstitions underpinning the ceremony. Finally when the slips of paper have been meted out, the townsfolk will open their pursed hands and look inside. On one of these scraps is marked a black circle, betokening an act of brutality and inhumanity that belies the quaintness of this seemingly well-ordered village.

When "The Lottery" was published in 1948, it aroused a violent public reaction. Jackson received hate mail and harsh criticism, readers cancelled their subscriptions to the magazine in which the story was featured (The New Yorker), and in the following years, discussion groups were formed to better understand this bizarre story. In a sharp turn of critical awareness, "The Lottery" has since been integrated into school reading programs, having become an educational rite of passage for many young students.

Though one may not be able to imagine the shock produced by "The Lottery" when it first appeared, who can doubt it? Sneaking into public circulation amidst the growing anxiety of a "cold war," Shirley Jackson's haunting parable was not only a blow to American confidence in its own noble character and mission, but was inimical to the perception of man as innately good and capable of civilization. Earlier in the century, the Anglo-Polish writer, Joseph Conrad, challenged this myth in novels which evoked the barbarism latent in purportedly civilized Western society. The "Lottery" was, by analogy, America's own "Heart of Darkness," and caused its own reverberations.

In one sense, "The Lottery" overturns the hackneyed notion of the innocent and gentle countryside, the pastoral idyll as envisioned by Virgil and many Renaissance poets. But that assessment limits the story and its author's intentions too strictly. Jackson was writing an allegory of the human soul, and she was drawing on the wide span of human history to show that something was deeply wrong, particularly in the light of two devastating world wars. As the story suggests, there is a deep reservoir of irrational impulsivity in human society, a notion that had been gaining currency since the mid-nineteenth century, reinforced in particular by Sigmund Freud, who discovered an underworld of strange and largely unconscious menace lurking beneath genteel Viennese society.

For Jackson, as for Freud, that menace is an atavism of man's primal heritage. History and human enlightenment have failed to eradicate it. We must live with our innate barbarism and suppress it with layers of civilization (albeit to our discontent, as Freud theorized). Yet, like Freud, Jackson seemed to believe that this irrationality could be controlled. While the "lottery" symbolizes the antiquated traditions, rituals, and superstitions that man preserves against his better reason, it fails to hold man in perpetual sway, as seen in its repudiation by other villages. Thus as an allegory of the human soul, "The Lottery" also reflects, if meekly, an optimism about man's inclinations toward freedom and happiness.

Terror in Freeburg

The Freeburg police department yesterday apprehended a local man suspected of running a terrorist operation from his own bookstore.

Pierre Bakunin, owner of The Old Curiosity Shop on Main St., was arrested in his store at noon by two undercover officers disguised as flamboyant homosexuals with immoral literary tastes. When Mr. Bakunin produced an unwholesome cook book, he was promptly arrested. While being led away, the former shop-owner was reported to have mumbled something unintelligible. One onlooker claimed he was speaking in tongues.

A careful investigation of the building was conducted shortly after Mr. Bakunin’s arrest. The investigation yielded damning evidence confirming police allegations, including a crate filled with such hazardous literature as Thomas Paine’s political pamphlet, "Rights of Man," Mark Twain’s racist novel, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Alan Ginsberg’s obscene poem, "Howl," and Vladimir Nabokov’s pornographic novel, "Lolita."

Since 1991, the Old Curiosity Shop had been an object of suspicion by the Freeburg Police Department and local residents. In that year, ownership of the bookstore, formerly known as the Town Book Store, passed from the hands of Wallace Chesterfield to the filthy mitts of Mr. Bakunin. The Shop’s history of terrorist activity began shortly afterward.

On random mornings, residents would wake to find on their doorstep more than they had expected: crouching beside the Freeburg Times, a lewd or otherwise anarchistic book in paperback. Milton Marsh remembers one fateful morning. “I walked out to get the paper and saw a blue book next to it. I picked it up, put on my glasses, and read the cover: ‘The Works of Marquis de Sade.’ But I had no idea who De Sade was. I couldn’t even pronounce his name.”

Mr. Marsh brought the book inside along with his newspaper. What he found in it astonished and upset this septuagenarian and former librarian. “I started reading an excerpt of “Philosophy in the Bedroom,” or whatever it was called. I just picked it out at random. After a minute of reading, my hands grew warm, then they went numb, and the book fell flat on the floor. I didn’t want to touch it. I picked it up with salad tongs and threw it in the fire. I later prayed to Christ to forgive me for bringing such smut into my home.”

But Mr. Marsh was not the only victim of this act of terror. Hundreds of other residents reported similar incidents, all within the span of a year. Leonard Potts, a general practitioner, found a copy of Sigmund Freud’s ludicrous book, The Ego and the Id, on his doorstep. The book fictionalizes the inner life of the mind, making outlandish claims about an entire mental world, mostly disgusting, which human beings are not even conscious of. “We’re no brutes,” Mr. Potts shrugged. “We’re decent human beings.”

Ida Tildwell also received an unwelcome gift: Grace Metalious’s lascivious novel, “Peyton Place,” about illicit activities in a small American town. Ms. Tildwell said that she had misplaced the book, but remarked that it was “very dirty.”

Neither was Mayor Frick Wheeler immune to these attacks. On September 3, after finding an illustrated version of Lady Chatterly's Lover on his doorstep, Mayor Wheeler decided to convene a council meeting to address this wave of terror.

The meeting was held at the Freeburg Community Center the following week, with over 150 people in attendance. The sense of rage, fear, and helplessness of residents was palpable. “We were beside ourselves,” Martha Freeman recalls. “Everyone was shouting and calling for justice. I was shouting, too. Someone left Nietzsche on my car roof!”

A special police task force was created to investigate the terror activity and to eventually root out the free-thinking rabble. Sheriff Burt Blunt was appointed head of the task force, known locally as The Valiant Squad. In his remarks to attendees, Sheriff Blunt said, “We’ll catch ‘em. And when we do, we’ll lock ‘em up for a good while. No one’s going to play with our minds and get away with it.”

During the meeting, town officials also proposed a moral-profiling law that would allow the Valiant Squad to apprehend anyone it suspected of immoral activity. After initial questioning, persons of interest would be sent before a special commission for further investigation. The Purity Act was passed in a separate election with near unanimous approval. It remains a vital resource for security and justice in Freeburg.

The arrest of Mr. Bakunin one week later has reaffirmed the value of the Purity Act. According to Sam Washington, a Valiant Squad agent, capturing Mr. Bakunin was “a no-brainer.” “You got a red-haired, bearded man with an earring, who buys organic food, lives with a woman who wears pirate clothes, and draws pictures in the park. Classic weirdo.”

Asked about the future of the Purity Act, Mayor Wheeler dispelled all fears. “It will remain indefinitely.”