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Where does "The Lottery" take place and why does the writer make the setting appear ordinary?

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"The Lottery" takes place in an ordinary village, resembling any typical American town, with no specific location mentioned. Shirley Jackson designed the setting to appear familiar and mundane, enhancing the shock of the story's violent conclusion. This normalcy emphasizes the theme of the thin line between civilization and barbarism, illustrating how such brutality could occur anywhere. The ordinary setting ensures the story's critique of scapegoating is universal, rather than confined to a specific place.

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The text of Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" offers very few clues as to the setting of the story. It vaguely appears to be a village with similar characteristics to any American town. Readers must make inferences about where it takes place. Shirley Jackson wanted to normalize the brutality of the events of the lottery to make it seem that it could take place in any town, anywhere. She insinuates through this story that there is a fine line between civilization and barbarism. Additionally, she highlights man's need to find a scapegoat, which is a theme portrayed throughout human history. Consider the opening paragraph of the story:

The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in
the square,...

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between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 2th. 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.

Jackson merely sketches a setting, leaving the reader to fill in the blanks. It seems like a welcoming and beautiful place, with lush green grass and beautiful flowers blooming. It certainly seems normal to readers, with the post office and the bank. This normalcy, juxtaposed against the horror to come, creates the shock value for the reader. I have linked (second link below) another eNotes question below, in which Jackson herself explains what setting was in her mind while writing the story, but the beauty and economy of her writing is that she creates that delicate dance between reader and writer, merely suggesting a setting so that readers have room to imagine and make inferences as to where it takes place.

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In Jackson's "The Lottery," the structure leading to the surprise ending is dependent on the detached, matter-of-fact point of view, together with the familiar and ordinary setting.  The point is that the setting is ordinary.  These are normal people.

The story is a scapegoat story.  And all societies scapegoat.  The point of the story would be lost if the setting wasn't familiar and ordinary.  The guilt would then lie with the particular setting and those particular people. 

But back to the surprise ending.  If there were anything about the setting that was out of the ordinary or odd or eccentric, the surprise ending wouldn't come as such a surprise.  The structure of the story is as it has to be. 

Finally, the reader is not told anything about where the story takes place.  Again, that is the point.  It could be anywhere, anytime.

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I picture this story taking place somewhere in the United States.  Somewhere very pleasant -- a little town somewhere in a nice, green area of the country with a good summer climate (it's nice and warm, but not that hot at the start of the story, the flowers are all in bloom).  Maybe upstate New York, or Pennsylvania or somewhere like that.

I think that the author purposely makes the setting seem very pleasant.  This is so we can be even more shocked by the horrible thing the people are doing.  I think Jackson wants us to see how even normal people in pleasant settings are capable of great evil.

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I personally think "The Lottery" takes place in the Corn Belt, because so much importance is attached to the corn crop. I believe the Corn Belt extends from the eastern part of Nebraska, through Iowa and into Illinois.The author Shirley Jackson lived in the cosmopolitan city of San Francisco, and the story was published in the New Yorker in 1948. The following quote from the eNotes Introduction to the story in the Study Guide seems significant.

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.

Many people in the Midwest were outraged. They thought they were being intentionally portrayed as ignorant, superstitious, and backward. I think they were probably right. The New Yorker was published by and for New Yorkers in those days, and the editor, Harold Ross, probably enjoyed creating an uproar. (Harold Ross was an eccentric genius commemorated by James Thurber in his excellent memoir titled The Years with Ross.)

A famous New Yorker cover shows a New Yorker's impression of the United States west of the Hudson River. It has been sold in enlarged reproductions by the tens of thousands. The picture shows most of middle America as a wasteland, with a few tiny buildings on the West Coast representing Los Angeles and San Francisco. That cover, too, is an intentional insult to middle America. The situation has changed in recent years because Americans generally are becoming more sophisticated and because the New Yorker, for financial reasons, is trying very hard to cultivate a wider audience. In other words, they probably wouldn't publish a story like "The Lottery" today.

The Corn Belt states are characteristically ultra-conservative and vote Republican, while the big cities are characteristically liberal and vote Democratic. There has always been a certain amount of animosity between farmers and city folk. There is less of it today because, for one thing, so many former farmers are being forced by economic pressures to become city folk themselves. Corn planting, growing, harvesting, and processing, especially, are being radically mechanized by big agri-business.

An excellent picture of present-day Iowa is presented by Tom Drury in his novel The End of Vandalism. See the reference link below.

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Looking at the language and sense of longstanding tradition in Shirley Jackson's "Lottery," without foreknowledge, I would assume the story is set in the South.

First, the name of one of the boys gathering rocks at the story's beginning is Dickie Delacroix—a name of French origin; Louisiana's origins were French. The land came into the possession of America with the Louisiana Purchase (in French, Vente de la Louisiane or "Sale of Louisiana") in 1803. [Ironically, "de la croix" means "of the cross," though the behavior of the townspeople seems anything but Christian. When Dickie is mentioned, he is collecting stones for the "stoning" to take place later that day.]

We can infer that the location is rural:

Soon the men began to gather...speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes.

The story takes place in a village. The etymology of the word indicates that it comes from the Old French, which might again point to the South.

This is not in what might be known as "backwater" country, where civilization might not yet have progressed. The language is too sophisticated for people raised in the woods, however, there is still the use of the word "ain't." There is also the more casual use of "anybody" rather than "anyone." Mr. Summers uses these words when asking if everyone is present.

Anybody ain't here?

Lastly, there is a sense of the superstitious nature of people which might also infer that the location is somewhere outside the path of progress (where a lack of education and logic is replaced with beliefs in the supernatural). This is mentioned with the hesitancy of villagers to help with steadying "the box."

...when Mr. Summers said, "Some of you fellows want to give me a hand?" there was a hesitation before two men...came forward to hold the box steady on the stool.

Places in the South have often been associated with a slower "movement" in terms of change and modernization. Perhaps because of the industrialization of the North before the South, as well as the elevated temperatures which slowed movement down there, and the aftermath of the Civil War, change did not visit the states below the Mason-Dixon line that quickly. Though some in the story speak of the lottery being ended in other villages, this tradition shows no signs of being put aside by this village.

I would assume that the purpose of "making the setting appear familiar and ordinary" would be the author's attempt to tell the reader that this kind of "blind acceptance" can occur anywhere, even in a place that seems otherwise harmless. Except for specific instances of foreshadowing (like the boys gathering rocks and protecting their hoard from other "thieving" youngsters), the story presents a mood at the outset, of people who have known each other all their lives: who joke with each other, know who is sick, who is alone, etc. This allows the reader to be lulled into a false sense of complacency and safety, which I feel is another part of Jackson's warning to the unsuspecting reader. Where there is "evil" for everyone to see, people can unite and take a stand to stop it. When it is accepted as commonplace behavior, it is less likely that someone will speak out against it—unless it impacts that person. However, as seen with Tessie, she is a minority and no one listens to her pleas.

**eNotes states:

Jackson herself… noted: "I hoped by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the story's readers…

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