Description
In “The Lottery” Jackson highlights our tendency to follow traditions without questioning their purpose or morality. This story follows the residents of a small unnamed town, often thought to be in New England (where Jackson lived most of her life). The residents gather in the town square for an annual lottery, each family pulling a slip of paper whose gruesome purpose is eventually revealed.
Considered to be one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature, Jackson’s work of dystopian fiction was first published in The New Yorker in 1948. The reception of the work was immediate and vehement; hate mail and canceled subscriptions abounded following the shocking twist on quaint, picturesque American small-town life that the story details. “The Lottery” serves as an early example of modern dystopian fiction in general, published the year before another iconic work of the genre, 1984 by George Orwell, and serves as an early example of dystopian literature by a female author. Jackson’s writing paved the way for contemporary female-authored dystopian fiction such as The Hunger Games series and The Handmaid’s Tale.
