sense of tranquility and optimism. At approximately ten o'clock, the townspeople begin to gather in the village square and prepare to participate in the annual lottery. Jackson does not specifically give the name or location of the town, which contributes to the story's appeal and underscores the fact that violent, traditional rituals can happen anywhere.

At various moments in the story, Jackson suggests that the town is a farming community by alluding to the harvest and crop yield. The pleasant, nondescript setting is juxtaposed with the shocking, brutal ritual which alarms the unsuspecting audience. Jackson also refrains from giving names of the surrounding towns, which contributes to her critique of American society as a whole.

The setting of "The Lottery" is, according to Shirley Jackson, her village of Bennington, Vermont: 

“I suppose I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the story’s readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.” [http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-lottery-letters]

Oddly enough, some of the readers of The New Yorker, in which "The Lottery" was first published, also wanted to know where such lotteries were held so they could visit this area and watch. This fact seems to underscore Jackson's theme of the human propensity for violence as a trait in some people, a trait exemplified by Mrs. Delacroix, who has been friendly with Tessie Hutchinson, but when Tessie draws her lot as the village scapegoat, she eagerly lifts the heaviest rock she can carry.

In her story, Jackson's village is a rural area, surrounded by other such villages with people who have lived narrow lives and, perhaps as a result of such lives, appear to have narrow minds, as well. Thus, Jackson's parable also points to a phrase used by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "the opium of custom." For, the villagers, especially Old Man Warner, continue the lottery simply because they have always had one.

"The Lottery" is set in a small farming village, somewhere reasonably isolated from other villages. The people living there focus on their yearly harvest to see them through the winter, and ever since the village was founded take part in a ritualistic Lottery that picks one person to be sacrificed in honor of the harvest.

The village is not greatly described, except in brief snippets; it seems to be a typical rural farming village, with communal activities and every person directly associated in some way with village events.

...the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock...(Jackson, "The Lottery," classicshorts.com)

This innocuous place is like many other villages around it. The anonymity of the village adds to its menace, as it could be any place in the country, even right next door to the reader's hometown. By using a sort of "Everyplace USA" setting, the author demonstrates that innocent exteriors can sometimes hide terrible secrets.

The setting is obviously in the American Midwest. The time is about the time the story was published in the New Yorker in 1948. The old saying quoted by Old Man Warner tells a lot about the location as well as about the purpose and tradition of the lottery. He says, "Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon." So this is undoubtedly one of the many small farming towns in the Corn Belt, which runs from eastern Nebraska through Iowa and into southern Illinois. The people in that region who read the story or heard about it knew that they were being ridiculed and insulted by a sophisticated Eastern liberal magazine which--at that time--bragged that the world ended west of the Hudson River. Shirley Jackson was not a New Yorker, but she was born in notoriously liberal San Francisco and spent her life in that vicinity. The people in her story are still practicing human sacrifice in order to insure crop fertility. This is an obvious exaggeration. It is in the mode of Jonathan Swift's well-known "A Modest Proposal" in which he suggests that Irish infants should be exported to England to be roasted and eaten. The New Yorker was still largely a humor magazine in 1948 under editor Harold Ross. It was full of cartoons and often printed humor pieces by Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, S. J. Perelman, E. B. White, and James Thurber. "The Lottery" might be considered black humor.

Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" was first published in 1948, and it is generally considered a "modern day parable," though the events could be set a century or more before. It takes place on a summer morning on June 27th in a small village somewhere in the United States. The mood begins on a happy note, but the ensuing events turn much more ominous. It is the day of the town's annual lottery, and every member's name has been put into a box. The winner, and one of the main characters, turns out to be Tessie Hutchinson, though her selection turns out to be anything but lucky.

Setting refers to time and place. The story was written in 1948, but it suggests an almost unknown era that could apply to many different times in history. The author makes this move intentionally. Readers do know that the lottery takes place in June, so we can assume late spring, early summer in terms of time.

As far as location goes, this is an unidentified location, but readers can tell it is a small enough gathering of people that everyone knows everyone else. Therefore, readers can assume it is a village, not an industrialized city.

No technology is referenced in the piece, and a stoning takes place in the end. These features can both lead readers to assume a time well before technology reigned and when human rights were not granted for all.

The purposeful omission of a stated time or place suggests that the events in "The Lottery" can occur for any society at any time. The link below provides further information regarding setting.

The setting of "The Lottery" has all the appearance of being a wholesome small town in rural America.  Through imagery and detail, like "the flowers were blooming profusely, and the grass was richly green," Jackson conveys a pastoral feeling of a gentle summer.  The men speak of tractors and farming, and the women wear "faded house dresses and sweaters." 

Only as Jackson develops the events occurring at the town square does the reader begin to question the premise of the story; the reader begins to wonder why exactly do the boys fill their pockets with large stones and what the purpose of the ancient black box is.  Jackson's use of setting in "The Lottery" is one of the greatest assets to the story; by creating a perfectly normal looking town, Jackson makes the gruesome stoning in the end seem even more horrific and disturbing, primarily because the citizens and setting were portrayed to be so average and common place.  Through the use of setting in "The Lottery," Jackson argues that blindly following tradition can make even the most innocent seeming of small towns seem monstrous.

The setting of the story is important because it helps create the ironic tension between what the inhabitants should be like and how they actually are.

1. The setting is a "modern" small town for Jackson's time, with a traditional belief system. The beliefs are archaic, however, so the juxtaposition of the happy town, where people gather at street corners to talk of "planting and rain, tractors and taxes", with the ritual sacrifice is the first ironic contrast in the setting.

2. A second important aspect of the setting is that it occurs during the summer, less than a week after midsummer, the summer solstice (when the sun appears to stand still, and when the sun is highest and longest in the sky); midsummer was a time when people gathered together to celebrate the sun and its life-giving power. Yet the ritual the townspeople perform is a stoning. (Biblical allusions abound-the sun/son, life vs original sin and throwing the first stone)

3. The physical setting, the clear, sunny day, with flowers blooming profusely, rich green grass, and children on summer vacation is in direct contrast with the dark deed that the townspeople with participate in.

Probably the first and most important was placing this story in a normal, civilized town. These were people who were going about doing things that everyone does during the day and took a quick break from that to see who gets stoned to death this year.

"but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner."

Secondly, this lottery is placed as a normal, once a year occurance. Nobody seems to question the fact that the townspeople continue with this tradition. In fact, some go so far as to speak down about other towns who've given up their lotteries.

"The lottery was conducted--as were the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program--by Mr. Summers. who had time and energy to devote to civic activities."

"Some places have already quit lotteries." Mrs. Adams said. "Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said stoutly. "Pack of young fools."

As a third element, Jackson appeals to the family urge in all of us by making sure to include little Davy in the process. We are met head on with the mortifying thought of a small child helping to stone his mother (and the thought that the table could have been reversed with mother stoning son). Again, this all seems like a natural, normal thing.

"The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles."

The biggest thing to realize with all of these examples, is that Jackson made this very real. The appeal of the story is that you could be reading historical fiction. There is debate about whether this story was written mainly as a piece of feministic literature or simply a statement about mankind and our nature to be followers, but the basic appeal of the story is in its "real" nature.

"The Lottery" takes place in a small village, apparently a charming place, with flowers "blossoming profusely"(1), a lovely village square, and grass that is "richly green" (1).  This is a small village, with approximately three hundred people. As the story opens, the scene seems idyllic. 

We know that the village has most amenities, a bank and a post office, a school. It has great activities, square dances, for example, a club for teens, and some sort of Halloween program.  We know there is a coal business, which Mr. Summers owns, so there must be some sort of coal mining in the area.  There is also likely to be some farming, too, since we are told that Mr. Graves has a barn, and there is a grocery store, which belongs to the Martin family. 

In short, this seems to be a lovely little village, a wonderful place to live, with some industry, some farming, and many conveniences.  Opening her story in this beautiful setting contributes greatly to the reader's shock by the end of the story. But ugly events can happen in beautiful places just as well as they can happen anywhere else. 

The setting of "The Lottery" is a small farming village in New England in which about three hundred people live. The town has been in existence for several hundred years.

As the story open, it is the mid-twentieth century. It is a beautiful day, June 27th, at around 10 o'clock in the morning, and the townspeople are gathering on the green, children, men, and housewives. Flowers are in bloom, and the grass is very rich and healthy.

The square where the townspeople gather is situated between the post office and the bank. The children have been let out school to attend the lottery. The boys have made a big pile of stones in one corner of the square.

The men and women stand talking in small groups. The women wear sweaters and house dresses. Everything seems completely carefree and ordinary.

Finally, the setting for the lottery is completed as Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves walk to the center of the square, where they set up a stool and put the splintering black lottery box on it. The box has been getting more and more run down, but nobody wants to repair it.

The beautiful, sunny, small town setting is in jarring contrast to the barbaric ritual the villagers are about to enact.

In terms of what time of year it is, we learn immediately that it is summertime, "June 27th" to be exact. It is a beautiful sunny day, and the flowers are in full bloom amidst the rich, green grass in this town that seems rather simple, tranquil, and idyllic. Because the location is a "village" where everyone seems to know everyone else, we are led to believe that this story takes place perhaps in the early- or mid-twentieth century; the people talk very much like we talk now, yet men and women seem to have their roles clearly delineated by gender—Tessie Hutchinson, for example, does not want to leave her dishes undone before she comes to the lottery—and so the story seems not terribly recent but not terribly old either.

She is also wearing an apron, on which she dries her hands, and this is another signal that we are likely in the early- to mid-twentieth century, when women routinely wore aprons to go about their housework. Men are very much considered to be the "heads of families" who draw, at first, for their entire family, and young men draw for their families if the father is unavailable (rather than the wife). There are "square dances" and a "teen club" as well as a "Halloween program," all leading me to believe that the story is taking place sometime in the early- to mid-twentieth century.

The location seems to be somewhere in small-town America, as people speak English and have a sort of informal and idiomatic way of speaking, like when Tessie says she "Clean forgot what day it was." She also calls her husband her "old man," an old-fashioned phrase from a bygone era. Mr. Summers wants to get started "so's [they] can go back to work'" Also, he asks if "Anybody ain't here?" and recalls of Clyde Dunbar that "He's broke his leg." Making a contraction of the words "so as," using the slang "ain't," and neglecting to properly conjugate the verb in the present-perfect tense are all signs that the story takes place in rural America and within the last century.

"The Lottery" is set in a small village in an unspecified location in middle America. The action takes place in the late morning on June 27, a warm summer day. Although the year is not specified, the time period appears to be approximately the time when the story was first published, which was in 1948, in the New Yorker.

It is the absolute ordinariness of the setting that gives the story much of its power. The characters seem thoroughly commonplace, and the story begins as though it is describing a typical, traditional ritual in a sleepy rural community of the type that would be familiar to many readers.

Jackson excels at writing horror stories in which there are no particularly macabre external elements: no vampires or zombies. Instead, a peaceful, familiar setting concentrates the reader's mind on the evil in the human heart, which is the author's principal focus. The tranquil setting of "The Lottery" allows the reader's unease to grow slowly as they begin to understand the nature of the ritual in which these ordinary people are taking part.

One of the weird features of "The Lottery" is that the action seems to be taking place in the heartland of America in the present day. The people all talk and act like rural Americans, like ordinary "folks." They all seem folksy, friendly, and neighborly--which is one of the factors that contributes to the horror of the gruesome ending. The lottery itself seems to be conducted in a characteristically small-town American fashion, with a little awkwardness and confusion and people talking back and forth with their friends and neighbors.

The lottery was conducted--as were the square dances, the teen-age club, the Halloween program--by Mr. Summers, who had time and energy to devote to civic activities.

Both square dances and Halloween sound typically American. Most of the peoples' names sound American, including Summers, Graves, Martin, and Warner.

Old Man Warner sounds the most American of all.

"Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while."

Mr. Warner comes closest to identifying the exact location of this event when he says:

"Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.'"

Evidently this lottery ritual is so old that no one really knows how or why it began, but it seems to have originated as a human sacrificial ceremony intended to insure a good corn crop. Now it is only continued because it is a tradition. From this clue as well as the people's speech patterns, it appears that the locale intended by the author Shirley Jackson is the Corn Belt, which stretches from eastern Nebraska through Iowa and into southern Illinois. Most likely this village is intended to be set in Iowa.

When the story was published in The New Yorker in 1948, the magazine as well as the author, received numerous complaints.

After publishing the story, The New Yorker received hundreds of letters and telephone calls from readers expressing disgust, consternation, and curiosity, and Jackson herself received letters concerning ''The Lottery" until the time of her death. (eNotes Study Guide Introduction)

The good people of the Midwest felt that they were being deliberately insulted--and they were probably right. The New Yorker was a sophisticated humor and literary magazine with few subscribers in Middle America or anywhere else besides the New York region. The story seems to be accusing Midwesterners of being backward, superstitious, old-fashioned, and ignorant. Times have changed, of course. The entire nation is becoming more homogenous because of such things as automobiles, super-highways, chain stores, and television; and The New Yorker has been suffering financial problems for years which have forced it to reach out for readers all over America. Interestingly, in 1991 the magazine published a series of excellent stories by Tom Drury about a state very much like Iowa which were collected in a book titled The End of Vandalism (see reference link below). It continues to publish articles about places all over the United States.

Shirley Jackson avoided pinpointing the exact location of her imaginary lottery, but she offers enough clues to make the reader assume that it was taking place right in modern times and either in Nebraska or Iowa.

“The Lottery,” a short story by Shirley Jackson which tells the tale of a small town that holds an annual lottery to decide which member of their community will be stoned to death. Part of the enduring, yet creepy power the short story still holds over readers today, is the fact that Jackson does not specify what small town “The Lottery” takes place in, or even what state. It is a story that could exist in any small pocket of America, which helps it achieve an unsettling ubiquitous power.

There are a few clues. The town has roughly three hundred citizens. The small town is agrarian, with the lottery being rationalized as a way to assure a good harvest, as evidenced by the town adage: “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.” It has the feeling of a town someplace in the heartland or possibly even the South of America, with “villages farther north” being rumored to have already done away with the lottery entirely. In reality, the exact location of the town in “The Lottery” is less important than the location of the morals of those who inhabit it They are kind, family-oriented people on the surface but underneath have the capacity for backwards, superstitious, and violent callousness.