Winning “The Lottery”
By T.J. Tranchell
We acknowledge Mary Shelley as the mother of science fiction and, combined with the gothic romances of Anne Radcliffe, the horror genre truly began. Unfortunately, more than a century passed before the queen would take her throne. That queen is Shirley Jackson. But like her predecessors, the popular acceptance of Jackson is often relegated to a small portion of her work as a whole. It is a tragedy that so many readers never get deeper into her work beyond two novels and a short story they were required to read in high school or early in college.
“The Lottery” is a masterpiece of suspense and terror, a short story that is both representative of its time and timeless. For its iconic portrayal of American life and its brilliance in the craft of short fiction, “The Lottery” is one of the few horror stories that appear in textbook anthologies of American fiction (Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are the other two). As a teacher, I know that students often revolt against that which is required of them, especially when it comes to reading. I believe readers of any age — and I will come back to that age issue — would benefit from being allowed to explore Jackson’s other 199 stories. The stories aren’t all horror, but they share a common thread of unease and ambiguity. First published in February 1949, “The Daemon Lover” (sometimes titled “The Phantom Lover”) is not a story of a woman falling for a demon. Rather, it is a story of what we now recognize as gaslighting and ghosting behavior. “Charles” from 1948 is a classic trope in which a kindergarten boy relays grand tales of a classmate’s poor behavior but with a spectacular final line twist.
This is where the all-ages part comes in. My son’s teacher assigned this story to their fifth-grade class. I’m still not sure what the purpose was, or what the students were supposed to learn from this story, but he read it and liked it. More importantly, it was a gateway. He was reading a story in class by an author he knew his dad admired. He became more invested in the story and now Jackson is a recognizable name to him. This benefited me because he was able to pick out new copies of The Lottery and Other Stories and The Haunting of Hill House as gifts for me. It’s not just children that can be introduced to an author they’ve heard about but never read; my wife devoured Hill House, the short story collection, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. She took a chance on The Sundial, too, but hasn’t touched Hangsaman or The Bird’s Nest yet.
The Sundial (1958) is a domestic drama. It’s a twentieth century New England version of a Jane Austen novel. Family dynamics and who-has-been-mad-at-whom-for-years drive the plot. The Bird’s Nest (1954) concerns itself with a woman suffering from multiple personality disorder. While the pop psychology diagnosis is out of date, the character’s thoughts and actions still ring true as we have a deeper — but still imperfect — understanding of mental illness. Hangsaman (1951) follows a college freshman navigating her new relationships with other students and maybe even a professor. It’s one of those “how true is this piece of fiction” stories that becomes creepier knowing that Jackson and her husband were teaching at Bennington College at the time, and she perhaps suspected him of inappropriate contact with students. The plot of the 2020 film Shirley centers on Jackson’s time writing the novel. The film itself is based on a 2014 novel of the same title. There’s a cyclical oddity about novelists, and later filmmakers, imagining times in the lives of other real-life writers. If Jackson was indeed working out her own anxieties in Hangsaman then what does that say about the novelist needing to explore that same moment but through the lens of another person? Many novelists just make up a new character.
The thing is… no one is as obsessed with the lives of writers as other writers. Feel free to try and understand it. Most of us don’t understand it ourselves.
Jackson, for her part, lived in that space of not knowing. She was an author who felt no need to explain things. Stories end where they need to end and explaining why or how would lessen the mystery, dilute the impact. No one knows why the village had to hold the lottery and sacrifice one of their own every June 27; it’s tradition and that’s how it’s done. Jackson wasn’t the first or the last to employ this trope, but it feels the most realistic coming from her. Her most frightening stories often were not supernatural but hyper-realistic. A teenage girl can be a poisoner just as easily as a group of strangers can come together to investigate a haunting. Shirley Jackson gives us the chance to ask which is more likely and therefore more terrifying. 🩸
About
T.J. Tranchell was born on Halloween and grew up in Utah. He has published the novella Cry Down Dark and the collections Asleep in the Nightmare Room and The Private Lives of Nightmares with Blysster Press and Tell No Man, a novella with Last Days Books. In October 2020, The New York Times called Cry Down Dark the scariest book set in Utah. He holds a Master’s degree in Literature from Central Washington University and attended the Borderlands Press Writers Boot Camp in 2017. He currently lives in Washington State with his wife and son. Follow him at www.tjtranchell.net or on X @TJ_Tranchell.
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