Book Review of The Lottery and Other Stories
Shirley Jackson's Sole Short Story Collection
Jun 26, 2009
Shirley Jackson (1919-1965), the author of various novels such as Hangsaman and The Haunting Of Hill House, was also a brilliantly imaginative and diverse storyteller. The Lottery and Other Stories, in which many of the stories were published in literary magazines such as Collier's, The New Republic and The New Yorker several years after World War Two, clearly illustrates her talent as a writer and her determination to write in her own voice no matter what her readers' reactions may be.
Story Themes
In her stories, Jackson comments on all facets of human nature and emotion including jealousy, ignorance and bigotry, savagery, disappointment, and a willingness to conform and follow the crowd.
In stories such as After You, My Dear Alphonse, Dorothy and My Grandmother and The Sailors, and Flower Garden, the children confront their parents' prejudice towards certain ethnic groups and groups of people. Elizabeth, Men With Their Big Shoes, and Of Course deal with questions of "family values" and female competitiveness. The Renegade and The Lottery focus on people with a small-town mentality, blindly following tradition and ritual even though they are glaringly, morally wrong.
For example, in The Lottery, the villagers uphold the annual tradition of picking a name out of a black box and stoning that person to death. At one point, Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, comments that a neighboring town has stopped holding the lottery. He scoffs at this and comments on the decline on tradition and the bad effects it has.
However, several of her stories, including Seven Types of Ambiguity, The Villager, and A Fine Old Firm have very subtle tones and messages and require careful reading, maybe even multiple times. This may frustrate some readers who enjoy action-packed stories.
Ordinary Characters, Unusual Situations
Jackson is anything but predictable, and her other stories feature such oddities and characters as a talking dummy, a woman who has a toothache and sees an imaginary man as a result of her hallucinations, a couple who come to New York only to find the buildings decaying and a dead body on the beach, and a woman who pretends a fancy apartment is hers in order to impress her boss. Most of her stories are in suburbia or a big city, and Jackson has a knack for perverting the mundane. Her characters are often nondescript and generally unremarkable, and the simple characterizations allow Jackson to explore the idea of "group" mentality and engage the reader with subtleties, mainly in symbolism and dialogue.
This collection of stories by a writer who is difficult, if not impossible, to categorize is definitely not intended for beach reading. But for its literary merit and commentary on the dark, often hidden sides of human nature, it is well worth reading several times over.
Jackson, Shirley. The Lottery and Other Stories, Noonday Press 1991, ISBN 0-374-51681-2
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