Shirley Jackson, "The Lottery" – Discussion and Analysis Questions

Answer the following questions in complete sentences on your own paper. Provide quotations (with page/line numbers) from the story to support your answers.Use MLA heading; type single-spaced; title your paper

1. Where and when does the story take place? In what way does the setting affect the story? Does it make you more or less likely to anticipate the ending?

2. Why do you think Jackson has chosen common people for her characters? Could she have chosen characters from other levels of sophistication with the same effect? In what ways are the characters differentiated from one another? Looking back at the story, can you see why Tessie Hutchinson is singled out as the “chosen"?

3. What seems to have been the original purpose of the lottery? What do people believe about it?

4. Is it important that the original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost? What do you suppose the original ceremony was like? Why have some of the villages given up this practice? Why hasn't this one?

5. Take a close look at Jackson's description of the black wooden box (paragraph 5) and of the black spot on the fatal slip of paper (paragraph 72? 74?). What do these objects suggest to you? Why is the black box described as "battered"? Are there any other symbols in the story?

6. Were you surprised by the ending of the story? If not, at what point did you know what was going to happen? How does Jackson start to foreshadow the ending in paragraphs 2 and 3? Conversely, how does Jackson lull us into thinking that this is just an ordinary story with an ordinary town?

7. Some critics insist that the story has an added symbolic meaning. Do you agree? If so, what is Shirley Jackson trying to tell us about ourselves? (Hint: Consider that this story was written during the height of the rise of Communism and the Soviet Union.)

8. Is the lottery a collective act of murder? Is it morally justified? Is tradition sufficient justification for such actions? How would you respond to cultures that are different from ours that perform "strange" rituals?

9. Describe the point of view of the story. How does the point of view affect what we know about the situation? How does it preserve the story's suspense?

10. What do you understand to be the writer's own attitude toward the lottery and the stoning? Exactly what in the story makes her attitude clear to us?

11. This story satirizes a number of social issues, including the reluctance of people to reject outdated traditions, ideas, rules, laws, and practices. What kinds of traditions, practices, laws, etc. might "The Lottery" represent?

12. This story was published in 1948, just after World War II. What other cultural or historical events, attitudes, institutions, or rituals might Jackson be satirizing in this story?