The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, though only a short, 15-minute read, sparked instant controversy after its appearance in the New Yorker in 1948. According to The New York Times, soon after its release, hundreds of people canceled their subscriptions, and parents filed complaints against this “gruesome” and “inappropriate” story included in their children’s school curricula. But what truly caused such upset, and why did it resonate so strongly?
In Riverdale’s Banned Book and Censorship Club’s discussion, many were struck by how deceptively ordinary the story begins. There’s a small village gathering for its annual lottery, children collecting stones, and families chatting casually in the sun. Yet as the story unfolds, readers discover that the “winner” of this tradition faces death by stoning, a form of execution in which a group throws stones at a person until they die.
What shocked us most was not the violence itself, but the villagers’ unquestioning loyalty to traditions. While the story itself did not describe gore viscerally, the horror lies in the villagers’ acceptance that such a tradition is the norm. According to thisbookisbanned.com, school districts in Iowa, Oregon, and Texas attempted to ban the anthology, fearing that it encouraged students to question authority, religion, or long-held values.
During our discussion, we compared these reactions to the story’s own message. Just as the villagers follow their ritual without reflection, many readers are confronted with what the story reveals about the dangers of blind conformity. Jackson’s story challenged us to delve deeper into why we preserve certain customs and what it costs to do so.
In this way, resistance to The Lottery mirrors the story itself. Over time, these same instincts to preserve centuries-old values have fueled backlash against social change, whether regarding race, gender, or sexuality. As our group concluded, The Lottery remains powerful precisely because it forces readers to confront an uncomfortable truth: tradition, no matter how familiar, may not always be right.
