The Lottery

The Lottery: Short story by Shirley JacksonShirley Jackson had no idea of the angry reaction The Lottery would receive when it first appeared in 1948. It tells how each year the otherwise ‘normal’ people in a small American farming town perform a gruesome ritual to ensure a favorable growing season. The major theme is how herd or mob mentality can drive people to do things they would never consider individually. Other themes include dystopia, gender roles, violence and cruelty (human sacrifice), acceptance (the blind following of tradition), and man’s inhumanity to man (the potential for evil in all of us).

Video Versions

2007 Film Adaption: A short video adaption produced by Aura Pictures which broadly follows the story-line but has some important differences. Can you find them? Watch and enjoy!

1969 Film Version: This short film produced by Encyclopedia Britannica Educational Corporation follows the story-line quite closely. Watch and enjoy!

Radio Play Version

As the name suggests, radio plays are special versions of stories modified to make entertaining listening over the radio. Sometimes the stories will be changed slightly, and often extra dialogue is included to make the story fit the program’s required broadcast time.

This play is from the 1951 season of NBC Presents: Short Story, a half-hour program which offered dramatizations of (then) well-known American short stories. To fit the half-hour format, the story was expanded by including conversations between families and townspeople both before and after the lottery was held. In addition, to add to the drama, a new character (a schoolmaster) was introduced who strongly objected to the lottery before being pressured into participating. For a pdf version of the script to read as you listen, click here.

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2 thoughts on “The Lottery”

  1. I don’t like this story because it’s too boring. I don’t want to be rude, but I’m honest only. The plot is without any excitement. The story isn’t too long, but when you are reading it, it looks like it is. At the beginning, there are too much unnecessary descriptions. One thing that I like about this story is the message that the writer want to tell us. Bets are not good and there’s a liitle percent that we will win. Someone always fixs it, like in this story, and no only that, bets can make bad relationship between people and violence.

    1. It is not rude to give an honest opinion so thanks for the comments Marko. I suspect that the long descriptions at the beginning were to create the impression that this was a “normal” village full of “normal” people (which it certainly isn’t). I like your alternative take on the message: that is anti-gambling as opposed to being against the evils of herd or mob mentality.

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