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.
Shirley Hardie Jackson was an American writer best known for her works The Haunting of Hill House, “The Lottery,” and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. She is celebrated for her masterful and artistic use of suspense, psychological depth, and her exploration of what lies under the surface in a seemingly “ordinary” life.
Jackson was born in San Francisco, and went on to attend Syracuse University where she met her future husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman. Despite her literary career establishing her as a pioneer of the Gothic horror genre, she also wrote highly successful, warm memoirs detailing her domestic life and family., such as Life Among Savages and Raising Demons.
