The Lottery

Many readers have remarked on the hypnotic power and emotional impact of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” Did you experience a similar reaction? Do you think the author manipulated your feelings in any way?

ANSWER

The Lottery

Emotional manipulation occurs when a story leads to sadness, reaction, and emotions due to human empathy.  In a story such as the Lottery, the reader tends to empathize with the characters due to individual perspectives and understanding of the character’s situation. Emotional manipulation leads to various encounters where an audience tends to empathize with the events that happen to the character. The Lottery highlights negative aspects of the ritual such as victimization, feminism, violence and cruelty, and the negative consequences of the tradition, which evokes an emotional response of the reader.

Stories tend to capture the reader through a pre-established design of elements meant to build an emotional impact on the reader. The Lottery is a short fiction story that gives the picture of a small-town annual Lottery. The story describes the shocking occurrence of events and customs within a town where a person is randomly chosen and stoned to death. The town residents gather in the town square, where each member of the town draws a piece of paper (Jackson, 391). With only three hundred citizens, the Lottery is done by lunch. Mr. Summers oversees the Lottery and brings a black wooden box. Children also gather in the town square and engage in boisterous play (Jackson, 391). The children are followed by men and then women, who all gather to participate in human sacrifice. The story focuses on how the village clings to traditions that lead to the victimization and death of other members. The Lottery story is about the human capacity for violence, especially when violence is upheld in an appeal for social order or tradition.

The village Lottery leads to violent murder every year, a ritual that indicates a dangerous tradition since the members follow it blindly. At the beginning of the story, there is no clear direction of the Lottery since the preparations seem harmless. However, the ordinary people that have just come from their homesteads will then involve themselves in a ritual murder (Franklin). Although the villagers uphold the traditions, most members remember very little details about the practice and the black box. Rumors about salutes and songs existed, but no member seemed to know how the tradition began and the information on the tradition (Franklin).

The only thing upheld in the tradition was victimization and violence, which indicated some priorities to certain villagers. The Lottery is a blind following of the customs and traditions that negatively impact the members of the village. For instance, the people in the village continue to participate in the Lottery even though they cannot recall the significant aspects of the ritual, such as ritual salute and tuneless chant.  The practices were held long such that the elements had been lost to time.

The village persecutes individuals, which creates much fear and tension among the villagers while drawing the slip of paper from the black box. All the individuals are at risk since the victim murdered is only guilty after drawing a wrong slip from the black box. Every year an individual has to be chosen, and their innocence doesn’t matter regarding the logic of the Lottery and the custom (Franklin). Victimization in the Lottery brings about feelings of panic, vulnerability, and anxiety, accompanied by despair and sadness. The emotional impact of persecuting innocent women and the random persecution leads to feelings of blame and guilt in a traditional society where men have authority and power that has been accepted as a norm in society.

The attitudes and reactions of the characters and the creation of suspense have extensively created an emotional impact. The story begins with no feelings of anxiety and sadness but progresses to feelings of fear and sadness due to the horror of killing a fellow citizen. Towards the end of the Lottery, the Hutchison family has to lose one of them. The kids are laughing and jumping, not knowing that they will lose their loved ones. The most depressing thing is that the residents of the society have seen so many lotteries, such as that they have developed an immunity to the horrific murder of one resident every year.

The acts of ritual killing are motivated by cultural beliefs but eventually result in an emotional feeling due to the violence and cruelty involved. The Lottery has enhanced an emotional impact through the story’s setting in a peaceful and civilized society. Stoning is a brutal and cruel act that creates horrifying scenes. Ideally, the story creates fear of cruelty and violence in a peaceful society since it clearly shows how horrifying acts of violence can occur anytime and are committed by ordinary individuals (Franklin). The story also shows the psychology behind mass cruelty which creates anxiety and fear. The story has presented a community whose citizens have refused to oppose the ritual act but have unquestionably participated in the murder of one of their village members with no apparent remorse. This shows the level of cruelty, inhumanity, and brutal reality in everyday life.

Conclusion

In summation, Lottery by Shirley Jackson is remarked for emotional impact since the author manipulates feelings through the events that occur during the Lottery. The story has shown one of the darkest and worst dualities of human nature as carried out during the Lottery. The fictional ritual acts and treatment of residents of the village have evoked the emotional response of the reader. The ritual killings lead to victimization, violence, and cruelty, which lead to feelings of fear, anxiety, and panic while reading through the story. Shirley Jackson has extensively relied on the settings and events that have an emotional impact on the readers.

Works Cited

Franklin, Ruth. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life. Liveright Publishing, 2016.

Jackson, Shirley. The lottery. Harvard University Press, 2013. P.391-398.