Lottery

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LOTTERY BIO

Shirley Jackson (1919-1965) was born in San Francisco, California. As a child she was interested in writing; she won a poetry prize at age twelve, and in high school she began keeping a diary to record her writing progress. After high school she briefly attended the University of Rochester but left because of an attack of the mental depression that was to recur periodically in her later years. She recovered her health by living quietly at home and writing, conscientiously turning out a thousand words of prose a day. In 1937 she entered Syracuse University, where she published stories in the student literary magazine. There she met Stanley Edgar Human, who was to become a noted literary critic. They were married in 1940, the year she received her degree. They had four children while both continued active literary careers, settling to raise their family in a large Victorian house in Vermont, where Hyman taught literature at Bennington College. In 1965 Shirley Jackson died of heart failure, at the age of forty-eight. For twenty years and from various angles Jackson had built a reputation for quietly ripping the lid off life in Pleasantville: "The Lottery" and other stories; her two family chronicles, Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons; her horror novel, The Haunting of Hill House. TEACH 1. Pass around a black box and they draw a piece of paper. Don’t look at it. THEY CAN’T LOOK AT IT UNTIL AFTER READING. 2. Put the word “lottery” on board ask them to free associate/brainstorm. Small town America- never any trouble, everyone knows each others name, local people, church going folk, rituals, not really progressive, no tv’s, crime, everyone’s friendly Scapegoat – Someone they can blame to. A scapegoat. Scapegoating is the act
of holding a person, group of people, or thing responsible for a multitude of problems. The classic example is the Nazi scapegoating of the Jews, blaming the Jews for Germany’s humiliating defeat in World War I and the suffering in post-war Germany. In general, scapegoats are members of a community who can be abused without much fear of retaliation by family and friends.

AFTER READING: 1. Have them write down their immediate reaction to the story and after a few minutes ask for their opinion.

2. Bring up examples of people, groups that cling to traditions, or beliefs and extremists, even when their belief is illogical, no longer relevant. (KKK, STONING WOMEN IN AFRICA FOR HAVING BABY’S IN WEDLOCK, WITH NO FATHER.) READ STONING WOMEN AFRICA 3. Peer pressure, power of the mob, some people’s weakness with getting into the group. (Peer pressure to drink, smoke, look cool?) 4. Why are the townspeople holding the lottery? Why don’t they stop? 5. Is this writing horror? 6. What type of atmosphere does Jackson create at first, and how does it change? 8. What does the lottery mean to the villagers? (In other words, why do they do it every year?) In spite of its importance to them, what attitude toward the lottery is repeatedly revealed throughout the story? 9. Why are they holding the lottery? Why don’t they stop? IN Small groups -Respond to the roles of the men and women, how the children act, and what the social and business goals are for each facet of this society. -Sacrifice rituals operate on the principle of ‘scapegoating’. After defining the term, describe how the process of the lottery uses the scapegoat and tell what end is desired. Are there any examples in our current society of using scapegoats? -The lottery is run by two men names GRAVES and SUMMERS. What significance can you see in the choice of names? Do any other names in the story have interesting connotations? -How does the author increase the horror of the story by using irony? How does she fool the reader? -What hints does the author give us that all is not what it appears to be? Are there any early clues to later events in the story? Write a page long response as to how Jackson creates a sense of horror from the elements of what should be an innocent story about small town America. Write a letter as if they were Bill Hutchinson to Mr. Summers, telling him that a change in the tradition is needed. LAST: They look at the paper; the person with a mark on their paper is to stand up. Then ask the class if they are nervous. The person with the mark has won a good lottery, a free no journal pass from the teacher.

An Islamic court in northern Nigeria has begun hearing an appeal from a woman convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning under controversial Sharia, or Islamic, law. Amina Lawal will have to wait a while yet for the judgment. After hearing from her defense counsel today, the four Sharia judges have adjourned the case until next month. Her lawyers, funded by human rights organisations, are claiming that the father of Amina's child is her former husband, using the defence allowable under Islamic law, that the foetus lay dormant in her womb since the divorce two years ago. This is the second such case to come before the Sharia court of appeal. The convicted woman, Amina Lawal, now has an eight-month old baby daughter. The existence of this child, born to a divorcee, was evidence enough to convict her of the crime of adultery. Unless she can win an appeal against the judgement, she will be stoned to death. To convict a man of the same crime he must either confess directly to the court, or no less than four men have to attest to witnessing the physical act of adultery.

English 11 AP One of my worst experiences as a teacher occurred while I was doing “The Lottery.” It was back in the late 80s at a certain Catholic high school. I decided that my 11 th-grade class, which met during 3rd-Period, was going to experience firsthand the inhumanity that Shirley Jackson portrayed in her story. There were 30 guys in the class, so I folded up 30 slips of paper, made the infamous black dot on one of those slips, and then put them in a small box. One by one the students came up to my desk and drew from the box as I held it up high so that no one could peer inside. The boys were not to open the slips until I gave the signal. Because we had read the story in class the day before, there was a certain anxiousness in the atmosphere. Little did they know what I had in mind. I gave the signal; the slips were opened. As fortune would have it, the kid I least wanted to “win” drew the black dot: Sean Colson. He was a quiet, somewhat awkward and introverted boy, and not the possessor of many friends. As soon as he saw the black dot, his bottom lip began to quiver, but I did not turn back or modify my plan. I had the

rest of the class make a circle around Sean and his desk…with their desks; then I let the stoning begin. Instead of having the others crumple up their papers and throw them at the victim, as one of my colleagues had done in his class, I chose a different route. One by one the other boys were told to throw verbal daggers at poor, encircled Sean, to insult him and rank on him, to fling at Sean whatever information they knew about him, anything to make him cringe in pain there in the middle of the circle, this helpless scapegoat, in the best tradition of Shirley Jackson’s tale. It was like throwing a Christian to the lions in the ancient Roman coliseum. It was like the boys’ savage behavior, or what would become their savage behavior, in Lord of the Flies, an uncanny transformation. ( I have often thought since that Catholic High School boys, in an all-male environment, constantly need a scapegoat to blame for the absence of females that their crazy hormones crave. ) Thus the comments began: Sean had a pimply face; Sean had incredibly skinny legs; Sean was a spastic who threw like a girl; Sean’s asthma would be the death of him before he reached the age of 40; Sean’s dad had left the family for a whore( which happened to be true ); Sean’s mother, desperate at being deserted by her husband, became something of a whore herself and a notorious bleached blond; Sean’s 2 older brothers were drug addicts; Sean’s younger sister in elementary school was Flushing’s most famous and famished snot-eater ( which also happened to be true. ) On and on the verbal boulders were flung at poor Sean Colson. In fact, I think Sean himself was amazed at some of the things the rest of the class knew, things that the poor kid had tried to forget or was even unaware of. Even gawky Ryan Anderson, Sean’s friend, joined in the fun, as Mrs. Delacroix did to her pal Tessie in the actual story. Et tu, Ryan? Halfway through the torture, poor Sean couldn’t take it any more, started to cry, and dashed out of the classroom. As he fled, the rest of the guys--boys will be boys--jeered and laughed and clucked out chicken sounds at Sean’s retreating back. No sooner was he out the door than a collective applause rang out in my classroom that teachers on the other side of the building swore they could hear. I knew instantly that I had blundered big-time. It was only a matter of hours before the Principal would call me into his office. That afternoon, over the PA, Brother So-and-So blared angrily: “Mr. Sangirardi, at the end of the period, come to my office immediately!” Word of the morning’s events had spread throughout the school, and so my senior class seated before me, when the announcement was made, knew exactly why I had been summoned…and thoroughly enjoyed my predicament; a few of the guys even gave me the cut-throat sign. Would lotteries never cease? Well, I had to take my medicine. I went to the Principal’s office. And sure enough, there inside were Sean and his mother, Mrs. Colson. It’s strange, but the first thing I recall doing was checking out the top of the woman’s head and, by golly, the guys in 3rdPeriod had been right: Mrs. Colson was a bleached blond! I could see that by her roots, and so I had to bite my lip to suppress a smile. But hair color and its attributes quickly flew out the window as she commenced wagging her index finger and yelling at me. “How dare you this and how dare you that!” she must have screamed 30 times, which happened to be the number of people in the classroom earlier in the day who had witnessed the utter humiliation of her son. Behind his desk Brother So-and-So shook his head in disgust as Sean’s mom recounted each of the insults and accusations that her poor

boy had to endure. To compound the problem, Sean resumed his tears with each thing that his poor mother said, and before long Mrs. Colson herself was bawling. A number of thoughts went through my mind while I sat in that office under the merciless scrutiny of those 3 people. I realized, of course, that I had shown poor judgment in conducting my version of the lottery. I also realized that this wasn’t a bad dream from which I would soon emerge, and so I let Mrs. Colson have her say without interrupting her. Every member of a dysfunctional family deserved a therapeutic confession, and I actually think that Mrs. Colson felt better after venting the way she did. Maybe I had become her scapegoat for her lousy life. She wanted my head, John-theBaptist style, on a Catholic High School platter, but lucky for me the Principal thought I was a good teacher and would issue no more than a reprimand. Naturally, I apologized to Mrs. Colson, vowing never to pull this stunt again, and I did so sincerely because I had recognized the error of my ways. I especially apologized to Sean, and then took my remorse a step further. I told him that I would apologize to him in front of the class the next day, and, if Sean wanted to, he could fling verbal daggers at me in front of the other 29 guys and be guaranteed that I would take no offense. Having assuaged the wrath of the offended mother, I was told by Brother So-and-So to return to my classroom. Sean proved himself a better man than I, for he said nothing about me in class the following morn after I offered my public apology. However, the hurt look in his eye and all over his face which he wore for the rest of the year( perhaps indelibly ) was far more painful for me, his teacher, than any retaliation rock he could have launched at my head.

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