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Lit Up is a series in which I discuss my recent reads from a craft perspective. These are neither reviews nor critiques; they’re focused on exploring what worked for me, why, and how. As such, this post is rife with spoilers and assumes you’ve already read the text.
My first read of 2024 was The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.
I kept seeing it hyped late last year as one of the best horror shorts ever, which is how it got on my list. I found it quite competent and not as dated as I’d have expected — it was published in 1948 — and the memorable finale was delivered with wonderful grace and restraint.
What this story does best is set a scene that seems entirely quotidian and benevolent on the surface, while building an undeniable sense of dread that something is not quite right.
The stones are planted in the second paragraph, in a context that makes them seem like some odd, but innocent, children’s game. Their true purpose is not even hinted at until the very end; this is a masterful plant with an equally masterful payoff.
As the lottery is set up, we meet several people from town in little vignette moments, and everyone seems so nice and so innocent, but there are subtle signs that something’s amiss: the men smile at quiet jokes instead of laughing; everyone hesitates at first to help Mr. Summers stir up the names in the box; the crowd is palpably nervous as the men draw slips; other villages have discussed giving up the lottery.
These all feel a bit odd and contribute to an atmosphere of tension, but so far any of them could also be true of a perfectly benign lottery with a big cash prize. You feel like something’s off, but you can’t put your finger on it, and nothing you can see explains it.
It’s Tessie Hutchinson’s objection when her husband is found to have drawn the marked slip that tilts us over into dread:
People began to look around to see the Hutchinsons. Bill Hutchinson was standing quiet, staring down at the paper in his hand. Suddenly, Tessie Hutchinson shouted to Mr. Summers, “You didn’t give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn’t fair!”
If the lottery was for a prize, nobody would react that way; it’s now clear the “winner” is getting the proverbial short straw instead, but we still don’t know what that entails.
Unless we remember the stones.
And if we remember the stones, then there is a particular horror in watching the Hutchinson children draw their own slips, especially little Davy who is so young he needs help doing so. The implication is clear: the village would willingly stone even a child to death.
But it’s Tessie who draws the marked slip, Tessie who is marked for death, Tessie who will be killed by her own friends and family, in public, in broad daylight, for reasons that are so tacitly understood that they barely merit mention.
Mrs. Delacroix picks a stone so large she has to take it with both hands. Why? Is this malice, or mercy? We don’t get to know. Even little Davy is given some pebbles with which to stone his own mother, and nobody finds this the least bit unusual.
In modern horror we might’ve gotten a lurid description of Mrs. Hutchinson’s stoning, but here instead we end — we end — with my favorite line in the story:
“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.
By now it’s so painfully apparent what awful deed is occurring that we don’t need any more words.
The grace, the restraint of this ending!
And then, on further contemplation, we might even recall that some of the villages have been talking about giving up the lottery.
Some.
Which implies that many still engage in this barbaric ritual. How many? Again, we don’t get to know, but odds are that number’s higher than any of us should be comfortable with.
Craft takeaways: