Dec 25, 2009

The Lottery | On the Morning of June 28, 1948, and "The Lottery"

The essay below is an edited version of a lecture on ''The Lottery'' that was originally delivered by Jackson in 1960.

On the morning of June 28, 1948, I walked down to the post office in our little Vermont town to pick up the mail. I was quite casual about it, as I recall—I opened the box, took out a couple of bills and a letter or two, talked to the postmaster for a few minutes, and left, never supposing that it was the last time for months that I was to pick up the mail without an active feeling of panic. By the next week I had had to change my mailbox to the largest one in the post office, and casual conversation with the postmaster was out of the question, because he wasn't speaking to me. June...