by Nuri Rhines

Created on: September 18, 2010

The Prize of Death

What would happen if the prize for the lottery was death? Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery tells the story of a small town with a little over three hundred people. Every June 27th the town’s people go to the square to do the monthly lottery. They all stand in front of a man named, Mr. Summers who is the “official of the lottery.” They are talking amongst themselves when Mr. Summers calls their attention. He begins asking about some missing people from the crowd and then Mrs. Hutchinson shows up late. “Clean forgot what day it was,” she says to Mrs. Delacroix an acquaintance of hers. This is actually ironic because Mrs. Hutchinson later in the story is the one who is chosen. Mr. Summers begins calling out names one by one and they walk up and pick a scrap of paper out of the box. Then they proceed back to where they were standing and wait until everyone has their slip of paper. All at once they open their small papers and mumbles of “‘who is it?’” roar through the crowd. Someone sees that Bill Hutchinson has a black dot on his paper (Mrs. Hutchinson’s husband) and Mrs. Hutchinson begins to yell that “‘that is not fair.’” This catches the reader off guard because it is a lottery. Usually when someone gets picked for a lottery they are happy and overjoyed. Mr. Summers then calls Mr. Hutchinson and his family to the box. Mr. Graves ( a helper of Mr. Summer) empties the box then puts the Hutchinson’s family papers in the box. Mr. Summers have them all drawl again and open each of their papers one by one. Mrs. Hutchinson is the one with the black dot now. “‘All right folks.’” Mr. Summers said. “‘Let’s finish quickly.’” People begin picking up stones. She went in the “center of a cleared space” as she screamed “‘it isn’t fair, it isn’t right.’” The story ends with the words “and then they were upon her.”

When I first read this I was completely taken aback. Never did I suspect that the lottery would be death. What Shirley Jackson did in The Lottery, irony. Instead of making lottery a prize they made the actual prize death and death is certainly not a prize. In the beginning of the story Jackson made it seem like it was just another day and everyone seemed anxious and nervous about the lottery. The reader could have never guessed that someone was going to be stoned to death and that is one of the reasons why this story is so interesting. Also, all the characters have this okay attitude about stoning Mrs. Hutchinson. This brings up the question, could we as humans get use to doing something so dreadfully evil? Jackson was trying to make this point in her short-story. The people in the village, including the little kids had no problem killing Mrs. Hutchinson. So what does this say about human nature?” Well, it basically says that we as human beings are capable of anything.

Jackson showed through irony the winning of the lottery as being death instead of a prize. She also told about human nature and how humans are capable of all things. Jackson’s lottery will be a story that will go on through centuries because the thing about human nature is that it always keeps occurring.

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