Commentary Writing of Setting "The Lottery" Shirley Jackson

Commentary Writing of Setting

The Lottery

Shirley Jackson

A Cruel and Terrifying Tradition

“The Lottery” is one of Shirley Jackson’s belles-letters. In its very title, Jackson makes the readers think that the whole story tells about a game which draws the participation to get the winner and the winner will get a big sum of money. But, it does not so. Jackson makes a bad meaning of the word lottery. The lottery in this story is an important yearly event which played by choose a person randomly by a drawing, to be stoned by everyone there. This tradition has been held around seventy-seventh years by everyone of the town. “The Lottery” brings us, the readers, to an unusual tradition in a small town. It makes us imagine a terrifying behaviour like that. In its title, Jackson presents a unique and interesting story with a sense of a little bit horror. When we read this story, we can find the textual evidence which describes the settings, because Jackson describes the settings directly.

The story takes place in the small town on early morning. The place in this story stays the same. The story begins with the line “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.” In the beginning, Jackson establishes the environment of the story. From the words clear and sunny, fresh warmth of a full-summer day, the flowers were blossoming, and the grass was richly green, we can assume a peaceful, stability, cheerful, beautiful, and happy situation. So it makes the sense of peacefulness and tranquillity and describes a normal small town on normal summer day and also a normal community. In small town, the people are usually very close and have an importance tradition that should be held by everyone in there.

In the second line: “The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank,....” It starts to make the smallness of the town; make the location is more specific where the location is a part of the whole story happens. The activity of the villager is still normal where the relationship of people in the village is close, it can be seen in the words “began to gather”. Jackson also mentions in the second paragraph: “The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer,.....” It helps the readers to make an imagination that children can play all day around people who are gathering to enjoy their holiday. It starts showing an unusual thing that in summer, people usually tend to spend their holiday but in this town people are very busy to prepare the lottery in a summer. The other unusual thing can be seen in the words “post office and the bank”, because it does not mention that there is a church, police station, courthouse, hospital and other buildings which are common in a small town. So it seems like no administration or government in there.

The sense of peacefulness changes slowly become an uncomfortable situation as illustrate in the word “black box”, the tool for drawing, “made a great pile of stones”. Up to this point, the reader will feel confuse what the relationship between the lottery, the black box, drawing people, and the stones. Another oddity from this town is people celebrate Halloween by doing the lottery and they do not dress like celebrating Halloween as usual (people dress to be like Satan). Halloween implicates evil activities. In this story, there is no mention such a religion activity which is usually held in the long holiday.

The readers can see hypocrisy among the people there. They seem very enthusiasm to join this unusual tradition, but actually deep in their hearts, they feel scared if they choose to be a “winner”. It can be seen in someone’s speech: “Don’t be nervous, Jack!” when Mr. Summer calls Watson to take a drawing and then Mr. Summer said, “Take your time, son.” Another evident can be seen in Tessie’s speech which disagrees when her family get the spot paper and unfortunately she gets the spot paper which means she is a “winner”. She screams “It wasn’t fair” for several times. It signs that she also feels scared and she does not want that inhuman activity held.