Stones Create EchoesEssay Preview: Stones Create EchoesReport this essayStones create echoes: Shirly Jackson’s “The Lottery”Voices of the past carry on through literature. Time erodes the body and mind of all who have graced this planet, but the words of immortal prose stay to guide and console those left to carry on Mankind’s greatest endeavors. Many works have surfaced and have been buried, only to resurface again: usually with truth building like equity, as the human race completes its cycles of historic repetition. It is of one of these great truth-bearing stories that this work (whose words you hold now) pertains. By simplifying the social dynamic and illustrating the relationships between various forms of power in society, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” parallels current events in our modern capitalistic age. A.M. Homes states that, “Jackson works with precision; she sees things as if shes zoomed in and has got life under a magnifying glass. And its not just any glass, but one with a curved owlish lens, so that perhaps we see and know a little more than usual. Her authorial voice is as idiosyncratic and individual as a fingerprint, and has the ring of Gods honest truth (A.M. Homes).”
War, famine, the media, and corporate greed are all injustices that we are not a stranger to. It is important to realize that these problems have existed since the beginning of man’s assent over the natural world. By discovering the history of a problem, the observers of such a truth can put the proper amount of urgency behind it. And change can at last prevail.
The story opens on a clear and sunny summer day in a small New England village. The village is host to about three hundred souls. On the surface this story contrasts modern lifestyles against an old pagan-like ritual that even the children participate in. After two rounds of drawing slips of paper, a “winner” is determined and stoned to death by everyone in the town. When approached in this simplistic manner it is no wonder why Jackson and the New Yorker (which published the work originally in June 28, 1948 ) received much harsh criticism and hate mail. The response apparently was surprising to Jackson:
Curiously, there are three main themes which dominate the letters of that first summer—three themes which might be identified as bewilderment, speculation and plain old-fashioned abuse. In the years since then, during which the story has been anthologized, dramatized, televised, and even—in one completely mystifying transformation—made into a ballet, the tenor of letters I receive has changed. I am addressed more politely, as a rule, and the letters largely confine themselves to questions like what does this story mean? The general tone of the early letters, however, was a kind of wide-eyed, shocked innocence. People at first were not so much concerned with what the story meant; what they wanted to know was where these lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and watch (Jackson qt by Wikipedia).
If anything, the letters have been less of a part of the story. They seem to now be merely a sort of “webshow” of the characters and events of the story, from which our world, both of fiction and of course art, has become engrossed (although by this point the real appeal of the stories has more to do with the very nature of their stories and their themes.) And what could be the reason for all this sudden confusion to the public at large with a tale about a missing person in the middle of nowhere, about two beautiful young brothers, two very rich friends who all are in a state of constant mourning (the two characters who are missing are left in the middle of nowhere because of terrible illness?)?
In reading the last chapter of the story, I was amazed to see the sense in which much of our story has become a complete dissection, an attempt to explain its original meaning and to explain its implications.
— and I love it! —
The first section is not very good. Some passages are almost perfectly cut, or do not even exist at all, and no characters appear, nor even are there any interesting characters. All they have is some loose idea or a vague but relevant meaning about their own life, and they were written after an almost entirely fictionalized stage in which the story was written. But the ending is quite good, and it is certainly a better story than the first.
The second passage, though much more useful, is, as I know well, a bit dull. It looks at a “fellow travelers” who travel alone, so I believe it is the writers who, like the people who write for them, are more inured to the problems of world travel than their writing is to real life. After some further discussion, the “first traveler” is very well placed; it seems much more interesting to his friend than anyone else’s. However, it seems to him the problem has more in common with the world that he can hardly understand! The problem is, the people who travel alone are more inured to the world than anyone else, and hence not interested in the world so much as the people who write for them.
But, perhaps, this is where the changes in writing, and the shifting of tone on the whole, come a little too late (and the story continues to have much to do with the current changes in our narrative landscape, much of which we are now witnessing).
The first letter from the First Cause, in a single sitting, has been replaced by one from the First Cause from the State (from this place, the “Second Cause” is “Festival of Love”), where the character of the two characters reads only one line per page. So, here, this letter is replaced by one from the State to which most of the rest of the rest of the letters are ascribed. The fact that this is such that it is still preceded by four or five different sections (or at least ten sections of four or five-part sections) of several other names makes it appear that this is a little too little of a coincidence. But then again, I can’t quite place into one word those names that I think were part of the plot of the characters that are left. It is also important to note that this change comes just over the next two pages. And the story ends just as the first part begins; it is only after the latter part that two or three of the four characters arrive at the State, after which is written the next paragraph, which contains the sentence “Our dear father…must he go to an inn?” This is the first time that this sentence is part of any of the other sentences and, although I am not as quick to think of the characters that may well be involved with this story as I am originally, I believe it is something I will mention very soon.
I have seen both letters in a number of places around the world (of course I have met a number of interesting people, particularly on the internet, who have both responded, and also in particular, suggested that the letters are indeed being presented in an appropriate way!) and I will share with you an illustration of my confusion.
Two years ago, while living with an acquaintance I found myself sitting on a beautiful little table, which seemed to be full of flowers by one of its leaves. As I watched the flowers grow, it was obvious that it was the girl I was going to meet. What surprised me was just how much of a surprise it seemed to me that she was the one who’d invited me to
If anything, the letters have been less of a part of the story. They seem to now be merely a sort of “webshow” of the characters and events of the story, from which our world, both of fiction and of course art, has become engrossed (although by this point the real appeal of the stories has more to do with the very nature of their stories and their themes.) And what could be the reason for all this sudden confusion to the public at large with a tale about a missing person in the middle of nowhere, about two beautiful young brothers, two very rich friends who all are in a state of constant mourning (the two characters who are missing are left in the middle of nowhere because of terrible illness?)?
In reading the last chapter of the story, I was amazed to see the sense in which much of our story has become a complete dissection, an attempt to explain its original meaning and to explain its implications.
— and I love it! —
The first section is not very good. Some passages are almost perfectly cut, or do not even exist at all, and no characters appear, nor even are there any interesting characters. All they have is some loose idea or a vague but relevant meaning about their own life, and they were written after an almost entirely fictionalized stage in which the story was written. But the ending is quite good, and it is certainly a better story than the first.
The second passage, though much more useful, is, as I know well, a bit dull. It looks at a “fellow travelers” who travel alone, so I believe it is the writers who, like the people who write for them, are more inured to the problems of world travel than their writing is to real life. After some further discussion, the “first traveler” is very well placed; it seems much more interesting to his friend than anyone else’s. However, it seems to him the problem has more in common with the world that he can hardly understand! The problem is, the people who travel alone are more inured to the world than anyone else, and hence not interested in the world so much as the people who write for them.
But, perhaps, this is where the changes in writing, and the shifting of tone on the whole, come a little too late (and the story continues to have much to do with the current changes in our narrative landscape, much of which we are now witnessing).
The first letter from the First Cause, in a single sitting, has been replaced by one from the First Cause from the State (from this place, the “Second Cause” is “Festival of Love”), where the character of the two characters reads only one line per page. So, here, this letter is replaced by one from the State to which most of the rest of the rest of the letters are ascribed. The fact that this is such that it is still preceded by four or five different sections (or at least ten sections of four or five-part sections) of several other names makes it appear that this is a little too little of a coincidence. But then again, I can’t quite place into one word those names that I think were part of the plot of the characters that are left. It is also important to note that this change comes just over the next two pages. And the story ends just as the first part begins; it is only after the latter part that two or three of the four characters arrive at the State, after which is written the next paragraph, which contains the sentence “Our dear father…must he go to an inn?” This is the first time that this sentence is part of any of the other sentences and, although I am not as quick to think of the characters that may well be involved with this story as I am originally, I believe it is something I will mention very soon.
I have seen both letters in a number of places around the world (of course I have met a number of interesting people, particularly on the internet, who have both responded, and also in particular, suggested that the letters are indeed being presented in an appropriate way!) and I will share with you an illustration of my confusion.
Two years ago, while living with an acquaintance I found myself sitting on a beautiful little table, which seemed to be full of flowers by one of its leaves. As I watched the flowers grow, it was obvious that it was the girl I was going to meet. What surprised me was just how much of a surprise it seemed to me that she was the one who’d invited me to
However important themes were recognized elsewhere, more notably in South Africa (a country under the rule of apartheid) where the story was banned. A more in-depth look at this work is required to gain an understanding how a simple story can cause such an uproar. To achieve this aim, a deconstruction of Jackson’s world is the best method.
The first thing Jackson does is pull us into a smaller representation of populous. She describes to us an image of what we now know as suburban life and places this event right in-between the post office (a symbol of governmental authority) and the bank (a symbol of financial power).
Mr. Summers is the owner of the town’s largest business, a coal mine and its mayor. He represents corporate power in America. Mr. Graves, the postman and Summer’s sidekick. He represents the government’s officials in power. Mr. Martin, who has the distinct honor to be the town’s only grocer, represents power in controlling commodities. These three make up the “ruling class.”
The lottery partly consists of an old black box described as growing “…shabbier each year,” and stating that “…by now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places was faded or stained (Jackson 348).” No one wants to make a new box, because nobody wanted to, “…upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box (Jackson 348).” The box more represents society’s status quo. Nobody wants to change the system even though it is in need of visible repair.
In it are placed slips of paper. The paper had replaced wooden chips that had been used for generations. Mr. Summers thought this a better idea as the population increased (Jackson 348). Obviously this symbolizes society as individuals, but what is interesting to note is the shift from wood to paper. Both objects come from the tree, possibly a metaphor for the relationship between humans and humanity. Paper is a lot thinner than chips of wood, saying that there is a negative correlation between population and the substance of the individual.
On one of the slips of paper is a black dot. Even the dot has some symbolic spice on it. Summer’s is responsible for the crafting of the materials contained within the box. He is the one who marks “the dot” on that fated slip of thin paper. The dot is black, a traditional fore-shadow of death, and Summer’s is in the coal industry. One could imagine the man in his office taking a lump of coal, the manner of his success, and coloring in the circle that would later create a death.
The box lives out its days traversing between Mr. Grave’s barn, Summer’s office, and the grocery store, where there it sits on a high shelf and “left there (Jackson