Publication History and Reception

Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” was published in the June 26, 1948 issue of The New Yorker. It garnered a highly negative response from readers, many of whom sent angry letters to Jackson and The New Yorker. People were confused and angered by the ending of the story. They felt that the concept of the lottery system was preposterous and that the ending was designed purely for shock value. The New Yorker claims to have received over 300 letters from readers requesting clarification about the meaning of the story. Some readers and critics even assumed that the story was based on real events. “The Lottery” owes its continued popularity at least in part to the sensation it created after first being published. It rapidly became one of the most anthologized short stories ever written. Though less controversial today, it continues to be favored by critics and educators for its compelling themes and intriguing premise.

World War II and the Cold War

“The Lottery” was published near the beginning of the Cold War era. In response to rising tensions with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the United States was entering a political period often referred to as the Second Red Scare. In 1947, President Truman signed an executive order that required federal employees to be screened for affiliations with suspected communist, fascist, or otherwise subversive political organizations. American nationalism was on the rise as Americans focused on the perceived threat of Soviet Communism. “The Lottery” can be read as a response to the persecution of allegedly subversive individuals in the face of this rising American nationalism. During the Cold War, Americans began clinging to the idea of a traditional American way of life and exhibiting blind patriotism. This is reminiscent of the blind acceptance of the lottery the villagers in the story exhibit.

“The Lottery” also draws thematic influence from World War II, which ended in 1945. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, it was evident that ordinary people would commit horrific acts of violence under the right conditions. This idea is echoed by the behavior of the townspeople in Jackson's story. Most of them are nervous during the lottery proceedings. Outside of Old Man Warner, no one seems to genuinely like the lottery. However, the townspeople are afraid of what will happen if they do not hold the lottery every year. Their ignorance and fear allow them to go through with stoning Tessie, just as ignorance and fear allowed the Nazis to commit mass genocide.

"The Lottery" was published in 1948, soon after the conclusion of World War II. However, Jackson set the story in an unspecified time and place. Many critics believe Jackson based the village on North Bennington, Vermont, where she and her husband moved after their 1940 marriage. Following the story's release, some of Jackson's friends and acquaintances suggested that many characters were inspired by real people in North Bennington. Jackson, who rarely discussed the story's meaning or context, remarked: "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 humanity in their own lives."

Some critics argue that "The Lottery" reflects the social, political, and cultural environment of its time. In 1948, the world was grappling with the brutal realities of World War II, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb. The Holocaust, especially, demonstrated society's capacity for mass genocide under the guise of the common good. Jackson's husband, literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, wrote about the impact of global events on Jackson's work: "Her fierce visions of dissociations and madness, of alienation and withdrawal, of cruelty and terror, have been taken to be personal, even neurotic fantasies. Quite the reverse: They are a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the bomb."

In 1948, the spread of Communism was also a significant concern. Communists took control in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet occupation force in Germany established a blockade between Berlin and West Germany, and tensions escalated between the democratic Republic of South Korea and Communist-led North Korea. Additionally, President Truman's advisor Bernard Baruch coined the term "Cold War" to describe the rising hostilities between East and West. In the U.S. Congress, the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated Alger Hiss, a State Department official accused of providing classified documents to the Soviet Union. Two years later, in 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy initiated a Communist "witch hunt" that persisted for four years. Also in 1950, Congress passed the McCarran Act (Control of Communists Act) to severely restrict suspected Communists. A few years earlier, in 1947, many in the American entertainment industry were accused of Communist Party affiliations, leading to the creation of the Hollywood blacklist, which included about 300 writers, directors, and actors. Notable figures such as Charlie Chaplin, Lee Grant, and Arthur Miller were among those accused of being Communists.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, the United States was predominantly a patriarchal society, where women were primarily expected to stay at home and care for the children. Recent critics have analyzed "The Lottery" through a feminist lens, suggesting that Jackson was commenting on the status of women in American society during the time the story was penned. For instance, Peter Kosenko noted in the The New Orleans Review in 1985 that in "The Lottery," women "occupy a clearly subordinate position within the socio-economic structure of the village."

Jackson achieved both popular and critical success during her lifetime, but apart from the phenomenally well known “The Lottery,” her work has received little serious attention since her death. Lynette Carpenter has speculated that “the reasons for this neglect are also the reasons for the reevaluation of Shirley Jackson by feminist critics”; she argues that traditional critics dismissed Jackson’s work because she specialized in genres that were not considered suitable for serious fiction, especially gothic novels, humorous writing, and domestic sketches. More recent critics have begun to explore the thematic depth underlying Jackson’s sketches, which are ostensibly concerned with what critic Anne LeCroy has called “the paraphernalia of living” but which can be seen with hindsight to challenge all the conservative dogma about women’s roles current in the late 1940’s. Jackson’s women are torn between the relative security of traditional domestic roles, with their demand of complete self-abnegation, and the flight to personal freedom, with its apparently inevitable consequence of the disintegration of the old sense of identity. Her stories offer no easy solution to the dilemma, but pose it in a variety of humorous and/or horrifying terms. As Richard Pascal has remarked, “What seems to fascinate Shirley Jackson most is the possibility that behind the self which we ordinarily assume to be irrevocably ingrained, if not preordained, there is nothing immutably necessary which we can call our own; it is, for her, an idea which is both frightening and alluring.”

Although these issues are of central importance to women’s literature, they are also significant for all human beings. As critic Donna Burrell has observed, Jackson “explored not only the division of the community’s tasks, but also the network of roles available to each gender, the justification, if any, for these divisions, and the problems which occur if a person of either gender does not fit his or her role.” Jackson’s view of human nature is essentially a pessimistic one—none of her stories offers anything like a traditional happy ending for her characters—but also a challenging and fascinating one, dramatizing the tension inherent in the effort to maintain both an individual and a social identity in a series of striking psychological parables.

1948: A Hollywood blacklist is created in 1947, with numerous entertainment industry figures accused of being Communists.

Today: While all U.S. citizens can freely choose their political affiliations, most align with major political parties. Ross Perot and the Labor Reform Party secured only 8.5 percent of the vote in the 1996 presidential election, as reported by ABC News.

1948: The Soviet Union occupies East Germany and blocks traffic between West Germany and Berlin.

Today: The Berlin Wall, constructed in 1961, falls in 1989; East and West Germany reunify in 1990.

1948: Birth control advocate Margaret Sanger establishes the International Planned Parenthood Federation, marking a significant step for women to gain more control over their reproductive health.

Today: Birth control options, including oral contraceptives and the Norplant implant, are legal and widely used across the United States.