ATTENTION VILLAGERS: The results of this year’s lottery are in. Please direct your final thoughts to the comment section below before the stones are distributed.
Well… that escalated quickly.
Let’s talk about The Lottery — what it means, what it unsettles, and what still feels true. Comment your thoughts, gut reactions, or theories.
Bonus question: If our book club did a symbolic lottery, what would the “stone” be? (Be nice 😭)
welp everyone,
as you all know, i had many thoughts about this story.
i think the main message jackson tries to intimate—this idea of “don’t be a fool to tradition” or “look how violent humans can be”—honestly felt pretty shallow and, in some ways, kind of tone-deaf. i’ll go into more depth in my review, and obviously you all heard me talk about this during the meeting, but i really don’t think these themes can be explored in the vacuum she attempts to write from. you can’t explore ideas like “violence is human nature” or “people blindly follow tradition” in a vacuum because these things don’t exist in a vacuum. and even if they could be, i don’t find them particularly rich or thought-provoking questions to begin with. they flatten the complexity of the human experience and ignore the actual systems, histories, and contexts that lead people to commit violence or conform to collective harm.
and this is where it crosses into being morally irresponsible. by acting like violence is just “human nature” rather than a product of political and social construction, the story lets people off the hook. it implies that everyone is equally capable and equally guilty, which is not only false, but also deeply dismissive of the ways violence disproportionately targets specific groups. so yeah, for me, the message not only lacks depth—it borders on being morally evasive.
and look, here’s the part that gets me: she wrote this in 1948—just three years after the end of WWII and the liberation of the concentration camps. three years after hiroshima and nagasaki. while the U.S. was still very much in the era of segregation, lynchings, and normalized racial violence. and somehow, jackson looks at that world and decides to write a “shocking” story where the twist is… people are blindly violent? the horror she’s describing isn’t speculative—it wasn’t hidden. it was on the front page of the newspaper. it was baked into the very structure of american society. so to act like this is some profound moral statement just feels bizarre, even a little naive. it kind of gives “we live in a society” energy before that was a meme.
it almost feels like jackson wants us to be disturbed by this abstract, fictional town without asking why such systems of violence emerge, who builds them, who benefits, or how they’re maintained. instead, she gestures toward some vaguely universal human flaw—like “see? everyone has the capacity to be evil”—and i find that framing both morally unhelpful and historically irresponsible. it risks flattening victims and perpetrators into the same category and ends up weirdly exonerating the townspeople under the guise of “human nature.”
now—to be fair, i’m not saying a story has to directly reference current events or tie itself to historical atrocities to be meaningful. allegory and abstraction are completely valid literary tools. jackson didn’t need to write about nazis or jim crow to talk about violence and complicity. but when your story’s central theme is basically “look how easily people participate in violence,” and you’re writing at a time when actual systemic violence is omnipresent and well-documented… you owe it to the reader to bring a little more nuance to the table. the themes she leans on are so broad, so obvious, that they end up feeling almost shallow. if you’re going to abstract horror—if you’re going to write an allegory instead of confronting history directly—then at least make the allegory layered, complex, original. say something we don’t already know. otherwise, what are we learning? what’s the takeaway beyond “humans bad, tradition scary”? come on girl!!!
you could argue its a systemic critique, and if you did, i would argue the system is too poorly setup for that to be the focus of the message (seriously…just look at the worldbuilding). and if you argue “it was never meant to be a systemic critique” i’d reply: i know. and i think her actual theme is incredibly shallow and thematically lazy. LOL.
my main point here – “humans have a capacity for violence” and “the psychology of violence” boring. lazy. overdone. there are deeper and more complex themes lurking just around the corner that jackson missed entirely.
that being said… once you start reading past the main “message,” i think some of the tertiary themes are actually way more compelling and relevant—especially in a modern context. i’m talking about things like anti-intellectualism, the normalization of horror, the way people compartmentalize or use casual, sanitized language to mask violence, and of course, the banality of evil. these aren’t things jackson necessarily foregrounds, but they exist in the margins—in how the characters speak, what they choose to ignore, and how the lottery has been absorbed into their understanding of “community.”
the anti-intellectualism in particular really stood out to me. it’s subtle, but it’s everywhere in the way people talk about the lottery—there’s this complete disinterest in asking questions, in understanding the origins or implications of the ritual. when mr. adams brings up how other towns have stopped doing it, he’s immediately brushed off. people don’t want to think too hard, they don’t want to confront the contradictions or moral failings of the system they’re upholding. and the one person who actually does question things—tessie hutchinson—only starts doing so when she’s personally affected. even then, she doesn’t criticize the system itself, just the way it played out unfairly for her. there’s no appetite for critical thinking—just adherence, deflection, and keeping things “the way they’ve always been.”
that refusal to engage critically ties directly into the normalization of horror. the townspeople don’t speak about the lottery with dread or moral weight—it’s just another yearly tradition. people joke around, run errands, talk about the weather. the violence isn’t hidden, but it’s completely normalized. and part of how they manage that is through language—they don’t call it a sacrifice or an execution, they just call it “the lottery.” the word itself is almost ironic—it usually implies something positive, something you win. but here, it becomes a linguistic veil that numbs the reality of what’s actually happening. and that’s so reflective of how real-world harm often gets hidden in plain sight—buried under euphemism, bureaucracy, and repetition.
that’s what made the story more interesting to me—not the big, clunky message about “human evil” or “blind tradition,” but the smaller, creepier ways people adapt to horror when it becomes routine. the way they stop thinking. the way they distance themselves. the way they internalize it so deeply that it becomes culture. jackson may not have fully explored these themes, but they’re there—and they raise way more compelling questions than the surface-level moral Jackson puts front and center. and if we reframe the story not as “humans are bad” but rather, “what kind of system could train ordinary people to kill their neighbors—or even their family—without hesitation?”, it opens the door to much more layered, important questions. questions that actually confront the structural conditioning of violence, rather than just wagging a finger at tradition.
it was really fun to discuss with you guys and i think the connection to psychology you guys had—classical conditioning, social conformity, moral disengagement- is a really cool way to look at it. in that sense, the world of “the lottery” isn’t an anomaly or thought experiment, it’s disturbingly plausible. not because “people are just like that,” but because systems can be built to make them that way. its not innate, but something plucked out of people, when they are pushed into a corner, manipulated into it, or its all they have ever known. the story starts making a lot more sense when you stop reading it as a warning and start reading it as a depiction of learned helplessness and coerced complicity.
stylistically, i did find the prose melodious and the pacing tight, but the core themes felt too weak and underdeveloped for me to really enjoy it overall. i also think jackson brushes up against something bigger—namely, how much culture shapes our moral framework—but then immediately retreats from asking any hard questions.i think this story says a lot about culture and how it has such a large influence on ones view of morality and their personal morality (though i dont know how far i want to go with this thought, as to not let off the hook people who participated in some of the worlds worst atrocities). i do think she tries to sort of take the responsibility off of the townspeople through this idea of the “human capacity for evil”, though i do think the notion of “if everyone does it then no one is guilty, and we must confront that” is part of the point (because if everyone does it, then everyone is guilty…)
still, that question of culpability within a rigid system is compelling—how much responsibility can be assigned to individuals who don’t have a choice in the system under which they operate? where do we draw the line between victim and perpetrator when complicity becomes survival? it reminded me of some of the things we talked about in crime and punishment, honestly. maybe the distinction comes down to power—those who benefit from the system can always be held accountable, while those crushed by it are more complicated. but even that has limits. jackson doesn’t really explore this tension, but it’s something i wish she had.
one thing i’ve been thinking about a lot is the story’s treatment of tradition—and how easily that can slide into a more sweeping, careless critique of culture. i think there’s a difference between questioning harmful traditions within a society and making blanket statements like “tradition is dangerous” or “people are violent because of culture.” that kind of framing risks sounding like a dog whistle for anti-indigenous, anti-non-western rhetoric, especially when the concept of “tradition” is so often weaponized to judge communities outside the western world. jackson doesn’t make that distinction—she treats tradition as this abstract, vaguely rural, backwards thing. but tradition is complicated. it can preserve language, art, survival, resistance. when it’s harmful, we should interrogate why and who benefits—not just write it off as primitive or evil. the lottery doesn’t ask those questions. it just says, “look how scary it is when people follow tradition blindly,” and leaves it at that.
Another thing that stuck out to me was how inconsistent the worldbuilding felt. For a society that supposedly accepts the lottery as a normal, recurring ritual, the details of how it’s carried out feel oddly unconvincing. Why stoning? It’s a brutal and archaic method, yet the rest of the town functions like any generic mid-century American village—people are chatting casually, running errands, making small talk. If this ritual is so normalized, why does the violence feel so theatrical and out of sync with the rest of the town’s vibe? Wouldn’t the method of execution have evolved into something more “efficient” or sanitized over time, the way real societies tend to disguise violence through process and euphemism? And if the lottery is truly treated as a necessary institution, why isn’t there some form of ideological justification, reward, or symbolic meaning attached to it? There’s no narrative around it being an honor, a sacrifice for the greater good, or even a practical solution to a problem—it just exists, inexplicably. That lack of internal logic makes the world feel less like a believable society and more like a stage built purely to deliver a moral twist. It doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, and that weakens the entire premise for me. I guess that’s fine…the “shock value” of it all…but i do think it weakens it as an allegory…
The story may reflect complicity, but it doesn’t invite the reader to interrogate it deeply. Instead, it leans into shock value and moral vagueness. We’re disturbed, yes—but what are we learning? Without asking the right questions, horror becomes spectacle, not critique. Ambiguity is powerful when it invites inquiry. But here, the lack of specificity veers into intellectual laziness. If readers walk away asking “wow, if I was in their shoes, would I resist?” instead of “what systems make people this way?” or “what sort of violence does the system I live within normalize?”, the ambiguity has failed its moral task, in my opinion. Because that first question, while seemingly Jackson’s intended point, is ultimately a bad point—these ‘shoes’ don’t exist in any meaningful context. The society within ‘The Lottery’ cannot exist in a vacuum, so approaching its morality as if it does makes no sense.
also, i kept wondering how this society would function beyond the moment we’re shown. like—what are children in this world? are they considered equal participants, or are they spared in some way? how are adults valued? is there a gendered dimension to who people hope gets chosen—like, are men seen as more essential because they perform more physical labor, so the town is quietly more “relieved” when a woman dies? does the town even want to grow, or are they subtly using the lottery as a way to cap the population? do people have more children to offset the annual loss, or fewer, to avoid emotional attachment and grief?
and all of that brings up a bigger question: what does this story say about how systems assign value to human life? even if jackson didn’t explicitly explore this, i think the subtext is there. the lottery isn’t random in its consequences—it reflects a system where life isn’t inherently sacred; it’s negotiable. where people’s worth is silently ranked by their function, gender, or age. and that feels disturbingly relevant. in the real world, systems often decide whose lives are “expendable” based on utility, productivity, social position, or convenience. whether through economics, policy, or cultural hierarchy, we see these logics play out constantly. so even if the story feels thin on its surface, it accidentally opens the door to these much deeper questions.
and then there’s the interpersonal side of it—how people even form relationships in a society like this. do they avoid getting close to others, knowing that intimacy could become a liability? or do they just bury that anxiety, pass it down through generations, letting the trauma become background noise—just another tradition no one dares to question? it makes the horror of the story less about the act of violence and more about the kind of world where that violence is not only accepted, but expected. and that’s what sticks with me the most.
sorry, that was a bit of an aside, but i think it’s worth asking. the worldbuilding here is so thin and symbolic that it leaves a lot unsaid—but ironically, that space says so much.
anyway. jackson, i guess, said “what if ritual stoning… but quaint.” and unfortunately, the surface-level takeaway kind of reflects that energy. 😭 overall, i think the story works as a horror story, it was fun and engaging. i don’t think it works a as a psychological horror…we don’t interrogate any characters psychology in any sense. i also don’t think it works at all as an allegory because the themes are just too weak..
also, to answer the bonus question: i think “stone” is someone making us read Paradise Lost again. from the beginning. out loud. with assigned roles. and then doing a group performance for a random audience in the pit of despair…
but i’d love to hear what you all thought—did anything hit differently for you? did you read the story another way?
what questions did it leave you with? or, if it didn’t leave you with any—why do you think that is?
also, what are your thoughts on my thoughts? agree? disagree? think i’m overthinking it (or underthinking it)?
curious to see what stuck with everyone (or didn’t).
what a comment! I wouldn’t want to give Jackson too much of a bad rap since the story is only 6-7 pages. That being said, I think in the space that was made, she made great use of it and told a compelling and thought-provoking story. But overall, I think you definitely make some great points that are hard to argue against!
this was a pretty interesting but short read! I think the overall concept/story would’ve been great if it were to be written as a book or maybe even made into a movie.
can you elaborate?
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