thesis statement the lottery

English Studies

This website is dedicated to English Literature, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, English Language and its teaching and learning.

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson: A Critical Analysis

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson first published in 1948 takes place in a small, seemingly idyllic town in rural America, where the townspeople gather every year to participate in a ritual lottery.

Introduction: “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

Table of Contents

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson first published in 1948 takes place in a small, seemingly idyllic town in rural America, where the townspeople gather every year to participate in a ritual lottery. The lottery, which involves randomly selecting a winner from the townspeople, takes a dark and disturbing turn, revealing the hidden cruelty and brutality that lies beneath the surface of the seemingly peaceful community. The story has become a classic of American literature and is often studied for its exploration of themes such as tradition, ritual, and the dark side of human nature.

Main Events in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

• The story opens on a beautiful summer morning in a small town where the residents are gathering in the town square for the annual lottery.
• Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves, the town leaders, arrive with the black box that contains slips of paper for each household in the town.
• The townspeople draw papers from the box, with the head of each household going first, and the person who selects the slip of paper with a black dot on it is declared the “winner” of the lottery.
• Tessie Hutchinson, a housewife, is declared the winner of the lottery and protests that the process was not fair.
• The other townspeople ignore Tessie’s protests and start gathering stones, which are used in the second half of the ritual.
• As Tessie is surrounded by the angry townspeople and pelted with stones, the reader is made to understand that this is a long-standing and accepted part of the community’s culture.
• The stoning continues until Tessie is dead.
• The villagers return to their daily routines as if nothing has happened, indicating that the event has become normalized in their society.
• Some of the younger townspeople seem uneasy with the violence, but they do not speak out.
• The story ends with the chilling description of the pile of stones left at the scene of the murder, as well as the shocking realization that this is a community-wide event that has been happening for generations.

Literary Devices in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

• Allusion : The names of some of the characters in the story have symbolic significance, such as Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves, which allude to the nature of the event they oversee.
• Hyperbole : Jackson uses hyperbole to emphasize the villagers’ excitement about the lottery, describing it as “the one day of the year that was desirable.”
• Imagery : Jackson uses vivid imagery to describe the setting, creating a contrast between the idyllic summer day and the brutal violence of the lottery.
• Irony : The story is full of irony, such as the fact that the villagers who are supposed to care for each other end up stoning one of their own.
• Metaphor : The black box used in the lottery is a metaphor for the town’s history and tradition, as well as the darkness that lies beneath the surface.
• Personification : The black box is personified as a character with its own history and significance, as well as the power to choose the “winner” of the lottery.
• Point of View : The story is told from a third-person point of view, which allows the reader to see the events from the perspective of multiple characters.
• Satire : Jackson uses satire to criticize the blind acceptance of tradition and the cruelty of mob mentality.
• Simile : Jackson uses similes to create vivid descriptions, such as comparing the black box to a “joke.”
• Social commentary: The story is a commentary on the dangers of blind acceptance of tradition and the power of mob mentality.
• Symbolism : The black box represents the history and tradition of the lottery, as well as the community’s willingness to sacrifice one of its own.
• Tone: The story has a dark and ominous tone, which creates a sense of foreboding and tension.
• Verbal irony : Jackson uses verbal irony to create a sense of tension and unease, such as when the villagers cheer for the winner of the lottery.
• Situational irony : The outcome of the story is a clear example of situational irony, as the person who wins the lottery is also the victim of the stoning.
• Dramatic irony : The reader knows more than the characters in the story, which creates dramatic irony, such as when Tessie protests that the lottery was not fair, even though the reader knows that she will be the victim.

Characterization in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

Major characters:.

• Tessie Hutchinson: The central character, Tessie is initially portrayed as a concerned wife and mother, arguing with her husband about a missing household item (“Wouldn’t these stones hurt all over?”). However, as the story progresses, her character gains depth through her growing unease and eventual defiance (“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right”).
• Mr. Hutchinson: Tessie’s husband, Bill, serves as a foil to her. He blindly follows tradition, even when it turns against his family (“All right, Tessie. That’s enough of that”). This highlights the conflict between blind tradition and individual survival.

Minor Characters:

• Old Man Warner: The oldest villager, Warner represents the unwavering adherence to tradition. He defends the lottery’s importance (“Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon”) despite its brutality.
• Mr. Summers: The lottery official, Summers, embodies a disturbing normalcy. He treats the event as a routine task, using a cheerful tone (“Good morning, everyone!”) to mask the ceremony’s sinister nature.

Characterization Techniques:

• Dialogue: Dialogue reveals characters’ personalities and motivations. Tessie’s arguments expose her growing fear, while Bill’s acceptance highlights the danger of unquestioning tradition.
• Actions: Characters’ actions speak volumes. Old Man Warner’s insistence on following the rules, despite the potential for his family to be chosen, showcases the tradition’s grip on the community.
• Indirect Characterization: Descriptions of characters and their surroundings paint a picture of their roles and the story’s atmosphere. The seemingly idyllic setting (“The morning of June 27th was clear and warm”) contrasts sharply with the dark lottery ritual.

Impact of Characterization:

The characterization in “The Lottery” creates a sense of unease and foreshadows the horrifying climax. The villagers’ casual acceptance of the lottery (“Mr. Summers.. used the same stone year after year”) makes the ritual even more disturbing.

By focusing on the characters’ blind adherence to tradition and Tessie’s desperate rebellion, Jackson critiques the dangers of unquestioning authority and the potential for barbarity hidden within seemingly normal traditions.

Major Themes in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

1. The Power of Tradition:

• Description: The story emphasizes the deeply ingrained tradition of the lottery. Phrases like “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon” (Old Man Warner) highlight its connection to the harvest and a perceived necessity for good fortune.
• Impact: The villagers blindly follow the ritual, even Mr. Summers uses the “same stone year after year” despite its horrifying outcome. This unwavering adherence to tradition, regardless of its purpose, becomes a central theme.

2. Danger of Blind Conformity:

• Description: The villagers act as a unified group, unquestioningly participating in the lottery. Even children like Dave Hutchinson are expected to participate, highlighting the pressure to conform.
• Impact: Tessie’s eventual rebellion (“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right”) stands out against the conformity. Her fate emphasizes the danger of blindly following tradition without questioning its consequences.

3. Juxtaposition of Peace and Violence:

• Description: The story establishes a peaceful setting (“The morning of June 27th was clear and warm”) with children playing and families gathering. This normalcy is shattered by the violent act of the lottery.
• Impact: The contrast between the idyllic setting and the brutal ritual creates a sense of unease and exposes the potential for violence lurking beneath the surface of seemingly normal traditions.

4. The Randomness of Persecution:

• Description: The lottery chooses its victim at random, with each villager having an equal chance of being selected (“each head of a household reached forward…).
• Impact: This randomness heightens the fear factor. No one is safe, showcasing the senselessness and cruelty of the tradition. The lottery doesn’t punish wrongdoing, it simply chooses a scapegoat.

Writing Style in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

• Deceptive Simplicity and Understated Horror: Jackson uses plain language and a straightforward narrative style to lull the reader into a false sense of security, making the shocking conclusion all the more unsettling.
• Foreshadowing and Symbolism: She employs foreshadowing and symbolism to hint at the story’s darker themes. Examples include the black box and the ominous gathering of stones.
• Vivid Imagery and Sensory Detail: Her use of vivid imagery and sensory detail, particularly in the description of the stoning, creates a visceral and disturbing effect on the reader.
• Effective Theme Conveyance: Overall, Jackson’s writing style in “The Lottery” effectively conveys the story’s themes of blind conformity, the dangers of tradition, and the potential for violence lurking beneath the surface of normalcy. It leaves a lasting impression on the reader.

Literary Theories and Interpretation of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

Topics, questions, and thesis statements about “the lottery” by shirley jackson.

• Topic: The Power of Tradition
• Question: How does Shirley Jackson portray the power of tradition in “The Lottery”?
• Thesis Statement: In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson utilizes the unwavering adherence to the annual ritual to highlight the dangers of blindly following tradition, even when it leads to violence and injustice.
• Question: To what extent does “The Lottery” explore the conflict between blind conformity and individual survival?
• Thesis Statement: Jackson’s “The Lottery” exposes the dangers of blind conformity through the villagers’ unquestioning participation in the lottery, contrasting it with Tessie’s desperate rebellion, which ultimately highlights the importance of individuality in the face of oppressive traditions.
• Question: How does Shirley Jackson utilize symbolism and foreshadowing to create suspense and hint at the dark themes in “The Lottery”?
• Thesis Statement: In “The Lottery,” Jackson employs powerful symbols like the black box and the gathering of stones, alongside subtle foreshadowing, to create a sense of unease and gradually reveal the story’s horrifying climax.
• Question: How does Jackson challenge the idyllic small-town setting in “The Lottery” to expose a darker reality?
• Thesis Statement: Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” dismantles the idyllic facade of a seemingly peaceful town by unveiling the brutal lottery ritual, highlighting the potential for violence and barbarity lurking beneath the surface of normalcy.

Short Question-Answer about “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

• What is the purpose of the black box in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson?
• The black box in “The Lottery” is a symbol of tradition and the power it holds over the people in the community. The box has been used for generations to hold the slips of paper that determine who will be the annual sacrifice, and the people in the community are afraid to change it. They even refer to the box as “the tradition,” and it serves as a physical manifestation of the hold that tradition has over their lives.
• How does Shirley Jackson use foreshadowing in “The Lottery”?
• Shirley Jackson uses foreshadowing in “The Lottery” to create a sense of unease and anticipation in the reader. She drops hints throughout the story that the lottery is not going to have a happy ending, such as the ominous description of the villagers gathering and the reference to the “bad” lottery in nearby towns. By doing so, Jackson builds tension and a sense of dread that culminates in the shocking and violent conclusion.
• What does “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson say about human nature?
• “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson suggests that humans have a tendency to blindly follow tradition and groupthink, even when it goes against their morals and values. The people in the community are willing to sacrifice one of their own every year because that’s what they’ve always done, and they’re afraid to break from tradition. Jackson’s story shows how easily people can be swayed by group dynamics and the power of tradition, even when it leads to violence and harm.
• How does “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson critique society?
• “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a critique of society’s tendency to blindly follow tradition and the harm it can cause. Jackson’s story shows how easily people can be controlled by tradition and the pressure to conform, even when it goes against their own morals and values. By depicting the violent and ritualized sacrifice of a community member, Jackson exposes the darker side of societal norms and traditions and the danger of blindly accepting them.

Literary Works Similar to “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

• Works with Similar Themes:
• “ The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas ” by Ursula K. Le Guin: Explores the concept of a utopian society built upon the suffering of one individual.
• “ Harrison Bergeron ” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: Satirizes the dangers of enforced equality and conformity in a dystopian future.
• “ A Good Man Is Hard To Find ” by Flannery O’Connor: Explores themes of violence, morality, and the grotesque in the American South.
• “ The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Uses a first-person narrative to create a sense of psychological horror and societal expectations.
• “ We Have Always Lived in the Castle” by Shirley Jackson: Explores the isolation and unsettling family dynamics within a seemingly normal setting.
• The Veldt by Ray Bradbury: Creates a chilling atmosphere with a focus on technology, childhood desires, and the darkness within seemingly perfect families.

Suggested Readings: “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

• Westlake, Sarah. “Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’: An Allegory of Our Times?”. Studies in Short Fiction , vol. 21, no. 3, 1984, pp. 363-369. JSTOR: [invalid URL removed]
• Melville, Dana. “Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’: The Logic of Sacrifice.” The Kenyon Review , n.s., vol. 9, no. 4, 1997, pp. 127-141. JSTOR: [invalid URL removed]
• Burlingame, Sandra K. Shirley Jackson: A Literary Life . Viking, 1997.
• Franklin, H. Bruce. The Lottery: A Social History of Gambling in America . Knopf, 1999.
• SparkNotes . “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. SparkNotes:
• Shmoop Editorial Team. “The Lottery by Shirley Jackson: Themes.” Shmoop University . Shmoop: ([This is a free resource])

Related posts:

• “The Use of Force” by William Carlos Williams
• “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce: Analysis
• “Civil Peace” by Chinua Achebe: Analysis
• “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor: Analysis

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

A Summary and Analysis of Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Lottery’ is the best-known story of the American writer Shirley Jackson. Published in the New Yorker in 1948 and collected in The Lottery and Other Stories , the story is about a village where an annual lottery is drawn. However, the fate of the person who draws the ‘winning’ slip is only revealed at the end of the story in a dark twist.

‘The Lottery’ forces us to address some unpleasant aspects of human nature, such as people’s obedience to authority and tradition and their willingness to carry out evil acts in the name of superstition.

You can read ‘The Lottery’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis of Jackson’s story below. You might also be interested in the following articles we have written on other aspects of the story:

‘The Lottery’: key quotes explained

‘The Lottery’: key themes discussed

‘The Lottery’: main symbols

But for the present, let’s start with a brief summary of the plot of the story.

‘The Lottery’: plot summary

The story takes place one morning between ten o’clock and noon on 27 June, in a village somewhere in (presumably) the USA. The year is not stated. The three hundred villagers are gathering to undertake the annual ritual of the lottery, which is always drawn on this date every year. Some of the children of the village are busy making a pile of stones which they closely guard in the corner of the village square.

The lottery is led by a Mr Summers, who has an old black box. Inside the black box, slips of paper have been inserted, all of them blank apart from one. The head of each household, when called up to the box by Mr Summers, has to remove one slip of paper.

When every household has drawn a slip of paper, the drawn slips are opened. It is discovered that Bill Hutchinson has drawn the marked slip of paper, and it is explained that, next, one person from within his family must be chosen. His family comprises five people: himself, his wife Tessie, and their three children, Bill Jr., Nancy, and Dave.

Bill’s wife, Tessie, isn’t happy that her family has been chosen, and calls for the lottery to be redrawn, claiming that her husband wasn’t given enough time to choose his slip of paper. But the lottery continues: now, each of the five members of the Hutchinson household must draw one slip from the black box. One slip will be marked while the others are not.

Each of the Hutchinsons draw out a slip of paper, starting with the youngest of the children. When they have all drawn a slip, they are instructed to open the folded pieces of paper they have drawn. All of them are blank except for Tessie’s, which has a black mark on it which Mr Summers had made with his pencil the night before.

Now, the significance of the pile of stones the children had been making at the beginning of the story becomes clear. Each of the villagers picks up a stone and they advance on Tessie, keen to get the business over with. One of the villagers throws a stone at Tessie’s head. She protests that this isn’t right and isn’t fair, but the villagers proceed to hurl their stones, presumably stoning her to death.

‘The Lottery’: analysis

‘The Lottery’ is set on 27 June, and was published in the 26 June issue of the New Yorker in 1948. Perhaps surprisingly given its status as one of the canonical stories of the twentieth century, the story was initially met with anger and even a fair amount of hate mail from readers, with many cancelling their subscriptions. What was it within the story that touched a collective nerve?

We may scoff at the Carthaginians sacrificing their children to the gods or the Aztecs doing similar, but Jackson’s point is that every age and every culture has its own illogical and even harmful traditions, which are obeyed in the name of ‘tradition’ and in the superstitious belief that they have a beneficial effect.

To give up the lottery would, in the words of Old Man Warner, be the behaviour of ‘crazy fools’, because he is convinced that the lottery is not only beneficial but essential to the success of the village’s crops. People will die if the lottery is not drawn, because the crops will fail and people will starve as a result. It’s much better to people like Old Man Warner that one person be chosen at random (so the process is ‘fair’) and sacrificed for the collective health of the community.

There are obviously many parallels with other stories here, as well as various ethical thought experiments in moral philosophy. The trolley problem is one. A few years after Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ was published, Ray Bradbury wrote a story, ‘ The Flying Machine ’, in which a Chinese emperor decides it is better that one man be killed (in order to keep the secret of the flying machine concealed from China’s enemies) than that the man be spared and his invention fall into the wrong hands and a million people be killed in an enemy invasion.

But what makes the lottery in Jackson’s story even more problematic is that there is no evidence that the stoning of one villager does affects the performance of the village crops. Such magical thinking obviously belongs to religious superstition and a belief in an intervening God who demands a sacrifice in recognition of his greatness before he will allow the crops to flourish and people to thrive.

Indeed, in the realms of American literature, such superstition is likely to put us in mind of a writer from the previous century, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose tales (see ‘ The Minister’s Black Veil ’ for one notable example) often tap into collective superstitions and beliefs among small religious communities in America’s Puritan past.

But even more than Hawthorne, we might compare Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ with a couple of other twentieth-century stories. The first is another ‘lottery’ story and perhaps the most notable precursor to Jackson’s: Jorge Luis Borges’ 1941 story ‘ The Lottery in Babylon ’, which describes a lottery which began centuries ago and has been going on ever since. Although this lottery initially began as a way of giving away prizes, it eventually developed so that fines would be given out as well as rewards.

In time, participation in the lottery became not optional but compulsory. The extremes between nice prizes and nasty surprises, as it were, became more pronounced: at one end, a lucky winner might be promoted to a high office in Babylon, while at the other end, they might be killed.

Borges’ story is widely regarded as an allegory for totalitarianism, and it’s worth bearing in mind that it was published during the Second World War. Jackson’s lottery story, of course, was published just three years after the end of the war, when news about the full horrors of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust were only beginning to emerge in full.

Hannah Arendt, whose The Origins of Totalitarianism was published three years after ‘The Lottery’, would later coin the phrase ‘ banality of evil ’ to describe figures like Adolf Eichmann who had presided over the Nazi regime. Such men were not inherently evil, but were aimless and thoroughly ordinary individuals who drifted towards tyranny because they sought power and direction in their lives.

What is Jackson’s story if not the tale of decent and ordinary people collectively taking part in a horrific act, the scapegoating of an individual? Jackson’s greatest masterstroke in ‘The Lottery’ is the sketching in of the everyday details, as though we’re eavesdropping on the inhabitants of a Brueghel painting, so that the villagers strike us as both down-to-earth, ordinary people and yet, at the same time, people we believe would be capable of murder simply because they didn’t view it as such.

These are people who clearly know each other well, families whose children have grown up together, yet they are prepared to turn on one of their neighbours simply because the lottery decrees it. And the villagers may breathe a collective sigh of relief when little Dave, the youngest of the Hutchinson children, reveals his slip of paper to be blank, but Jackson leaves us in no doubt that they would have stoned him if he had been the unlucky victim.

And the other story with which a comparative analysis of ‘The Lottery’ might be undertaken is another tale about the idea of the scapegoat : Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1973 story, ‘ The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas ’. In Le Guin’s story, the inhabitants of a fictional city, Omelas, enjoy happy and prosperous lives, but only because a child is kept in a state of perpetual suffering somewhere in the city. This miserable child is imprisoned and barely kept alive: the price the inhabitants of Omelas willingly pay for their own bliss.

Or is it? One of the intriguing details of Le Guin’s story is whether we are truly in a magical realm where this one child’s suffering makes everyone else’s joy possible, or whether this is merely – as in Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ – what the townspeople tell themselves .

Just as men like Old Warner cannot even countenance the idea of abandoning the lottery (imagine if the crops failed!), the people of Omelas cannot even entertain the notion that their belief in their scapegoat may be founded on baseless superstition. They’re making the child suffer, in other words, for nothing, just as Tessie Hutchinson is sacrificed for nothing: the crops will fail or flourish regardless. There are no winners in Jackson’s lottery: just three hundred losers.

Discover more from Interesting Literature

Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.

Type your email…

2 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’”

• Pingback: Unveiling the Dark Secrets:The Lottery Shirley Jackson Summary And Analysis-5 Moral Lessons - My Book Zon
• Pingback: 10 of the Best Shirley Jackson Short Stories Everyone Should Read – Interesting Literature

Comments are closed.

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Analysis of 'The Lottery' by Shirley Jackson

Taking Tradition to Task

ThoughtCo / Hilary Allison

• Short Stories
• Best Sellers
• Classic Literature
• Plays & Drama
• Shakespeare
• Children's Books
• Ph.D., English, State University of New York at Albany
• B.A., English, Brown University

When Shirley Jackson's chilling story "The Lottery" was first published in 1948 in The New Yorker , it generated more letters than any work of fiction the magazine had ever published. Readers were furious, disgusted, occasionally curious, and almost uniformly bewildered.

The public outcry over the story can be attributed, in part, to The New Yorker 's practice at the time of publishing works without identifying them as fact or fiction. Readers were also presumably still reeling from the horrors of World War II. Yet, though times have changed and we all now know the story is fiction, "The Lottery" has maintained its grip on readers decade after decade.

"The Lottery" is one of the most widely known stories in American literature and American culture. It has been adapted for radio, theater, television, and even ballet. The Simpsons television show included a reference to the story in its "Dog of Death" episode (season three).

"The Lottery" is available to subscribers of The New Yorker and is also available in The Lottery and Other Stories , a collection of Jackson's work with an introduction by the writer A. M. Homes. You can hear Homes read and discuss the story with fiction editor Deborah Treisman at The New Yorker for free.

Plot Summary

"The Lottery" takes place on June 27, a beautiful summer day, in a small New England village where all the residents are gathering for their traditional annual lottery. Though the event first appears festive, it soon becomes clear that no one wants to win the lottery. Tessie Hutchinson seems unconcerned about the tradition until her family draws the dreaded mark. Then she protests that the process wasn't fair. The "winner," it turns out, will be stoned to death by the remaining residents. Tessie wins, and the story closes as the villagers—including her own family members—begin to throw rocks at her.

Dissonant Contrasts

The story achieves its terrifying effect primarily through Jackson's skillful use of contrasts , through which she keeps the reader's expectations at odds with the action of the story.

The picturesque setting contrasts sharply with the horrific violence of the conclusion. The story takes place on a beautiful summer day with flowers "blossoming profusely" and the grass "richly green." When the boys begin gathering stones, it seems like typical, playful behavior, and readers might imagine that everyone has gathered for something pleasant like a picnic or a parade.

Just as fine weather and family gatherings might lead us to expect something positive, so, too, does the word "lottery," which usually implies something good for the winner. Learning what the "winner" really gets is all the more horrifying because we have expected the opposite.

Like the peaceful setting, the villagers' casual attitude as they make small talk— some even cracking jokes—belies the violence to come. The narrator's perspective seems completely aligned with the villagers', so events are narrated in the same matter-of-fact, everyday manner that the villagers use.

The narrator notes, for instance, that the town is small enough that the lottery can be "through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner." The men stand around talking of ordinary concerns like "planting and rain, tractors and taxes." The lottery, like "the square dances, the teenage club, the Halloween program," is just another of the "civic activities" conducted by Mr. Summers.

Readers may find that the addition of murder makes the lottery quite different from a square dance, but the villagers and the narrator evidently do not.

Hints of Unease

If the villagers were thoroughly numb to the violence—if Jackson had misled her readers entirely about where the story was heading—I don't think "The Lottery" would still be famous. But as the story progresses, Jackson gives escalating clues to indicate that something is amiss.

Before the lottery starts, the villagers keep "their distance" from the stool with the black box on it, and they hesitate when Mr. Summers asks for help. This is not necessarily the reaction you might expect from people who are looking forward to the lottery.

It also seems somewhat unexpected that the villagers talk as if drawing the tickets is difficult work that requires a man to do it. Mr. Summers asks Janey Dunbar, "Don't you have a grown boy to do it for you, Janey?" And everyone praises the Watson boy for drawing for his family. "Glad to see your mother's got a man to do it," says someone in the crowd.

The lottery itself is tense. People do not look around at each other. Mr. Summers and the men drawing slips of paper grin "at one another nervously and humorously."

On first reading, these details might strike the reader as odd, but they can be explained in a variety of ways -- for instance, that people are very nervous because they want to win. Yet when Tessie Hutchinson cries, "It wasn't fair!" readers realize there has been an undercurrent of tension and violence in the story all along.

What Does "The Lottery" Mean?

As with many stories, there have been countless interpretations of "The Lottery." For instance, the story has been read as a comment on World War II or as a Marxist critique of an entrenched social order . Many readers find Tessie Hutchinson to be a reference to Anne Hutchinson , who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious reasons. (But it's worth noting that Tessie doesn't really protest the lottery on principle—she protests only her own death sentence.)

Regardless of which interpretation you favor, "The Lottery" is, at its core, a story about the human capacity for violence, especially when that violence is couched in an appeal to tradition or social order.

Jackson's narrator tells us that "no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box." But although the villagers like to imagine that they're preserving tradition, the truth is that they remember very few details, and the box itself is not the original. Rumors swirl about songs and salutes, but no one seems to know how the tradition started or what the details should be.

The only thing that remains consistent is the violence, which gives some indication of the villagers' priorities (and perhaps all of humanity's). Jackson writes, "Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones."

One of the starkest moments in the story is when the narrator bluntly states, "A stone hit her on the side of the head." From a grammatical standpoint, the sentence is structured so that no one actually threw the stone—it's as if the stone hit Tessie of its own accord. All the villagers participate (even giving Tessie's young son some pebbles to throw), so no one individually takes responsibility for the murder. And that, to me, is Jackson's most compelling explanation of why this barbaric tradition manages to continue.

• Analysis of 'Paranoia' by Shirley Jackson
• Writing About Literature: Ten Sample Topics for Comparison & Contrast Essays
• Analysis of William Faulkner's "Dry September"
• Humor and Violence in Flannery O'Connor's 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find'
• Practice in Using Quotation Marks Correctly
• Biography of Eudora Welty, American Short-Story Writer
• Famous Last Words: Fictional Characters, Books and Plays
• Analysis of John Updike's "A and P"
• Analysis of Margaret Atwood's "Happy Endings"
• Analysis of 'Snow' by Charles Baxter
• Analysis of 'Gryphon' by Charles Baxter
• 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas' Analysis
• Analysis of 'The School' by Donald Barthelme
• Analysis of "Oliver's Evolution" by John Updike
• Who Paid for the Statue of Liberty?

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Lottery — Literary Analysis: “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

Literary Analysis: "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson

• Categories: The Lottery

About this sample

Words: 769 |

Published: Jan 25, 2024

Words: 769 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, foreshadowing.

• Langer, Susanne K. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951. Print.
• Richardson, John T. E. Imagery. Hove, UK: Psychology Press, 1999. Internet resource.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof. Kifaru

Verified writer

• Expert in: Literature

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1224 words

5 pages / 2126 words

2 pages / 938 words

4 pages / 1725 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on The Lottery

O'Connor, Flannery. 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find.' The Norton Anthology of American Literature, edited by Nina Baym et al., W.W. Norton & Company, 2018, pp. 177-186.Jackson, Shirley. 'The Lottery.' The Lottery and Other Stories, [...]

Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" has become a classic of American literature for its shocking twist ending and commentary on the dangers of blindly following tradition. In this essay, the following aspects of the [...]

Jackson, S. (1948). The lottery. The New Yorker, 26. Oehlschlaeger, F. (1974). The Stoning of Mistress Hutchinson: Meaning and Context in “The Lottery”. Modern [...]

The theme of symbolism in Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is a significant aspect of the story that adds depth and complexity to the narrative. Through the use of various symbols, Jackson explores the darker aspects of human [...]

Humanity is best known for confusing one thing for another and doing things in the name of following cultural guidelines or social expectations. But, is that action justified? Is it even a rational mindset? Most times, such [...]

“Racism is not about how you look, it’s about how people assign meaning to how you look.” (Robin Kelley, an American History Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles) People tend to judge each other based [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

The Lottery

Shirley jackson, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

The Juxtaposition of Peace and Violence

“The Lottery” begins with a description of a particular day, the 27th of June, which is marked by beautiful details and a warm tone that strongly contrast with the violent and dark ending of the story. The narrator describes flowers blossoming and children playing, but the details also include foreshadowing of the story’s resolution, as the children are collecting stones and three boys guard their pile against the “raids of the other boys.” These details…

Human Nature

Jackson examines the basics of human nature in “The Lottery,” asking whether or not all humans are capable of violence and cruelty, and exploring how those natural inclinations can be masked, directed, or emphasized by the structure of society. Philosophers throughout the ages have similarly questioned the basic structure of human character: are humans fundamentally good or evil? Without rules and laws, how would we behave towards one another? Are we similar to animals in…

Family Structure and Gender Roles

The ritual of the lottery itself is organized around the family unit, as, in the first round, one member of a family selects a folded square of paper. The members of the family with the marked slip of paper must then each select another piece of paper to see the individual singled out within that family. This process reinforces the importance of the family structure within the town, and at the same time creates a…

The Power of Tradition

The villagers in the story perform the lottery every year primarily because they always have—it’s just the way things are done. The discussion of this traditional practice, and the suggestion in the story that other villages are breaking from it by disbanding the lottery, demonstrates the persuasive power of ritual and tradition for humans. The lottery, in itself, is clearly pointless: an individual is killed after being randomly selected. Even the original ritual has been…

Dystopian Society and Conformity

Jackson’s “The Lottery” was published in the years following World War II, when the world was presented with the full truth about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. In creating the dystopian society of her story, Jackson was clearly responding to the fact that “dystopia” is not only something of the imagination—it can exist in the real world as well. Jackson thus meditates on human cruelty—especially when it is institutionalized, as in a dystopian society—and the…

The Lottery: Essay Topics & Samples

The Lottery is one of those stories that can be interpreted in a million different ways. The author brings up many cultural, social, and even political issues for discussion. It is so controversial that the readers were sending hate mails to Jackson!

Our specialists will write a custom essay specially for you!

Did you receive a writing assignment on The Lottery by Shirley Jackson? Have no idea where to start? Don’t panic! Sometimes you can find it hard to decide on one topic when there are so many options. This short story also has many Easter eggs to analyze. Custom-Writing.org experts created this list of the best ideas for the essay and The Lottery essay questions to help you out!

• 💡 Essay Topics
• ✒️ Essay Samples

💡 The Lottery: Essay Topics

Don’t know where to start your essay on The Lottery by Shirley Jackson? Check out the prompts to help you write a successful paper!

• Literary analysis essay on The Lottery by Shirley Jackson . For this task, you would need to work through the main themes of the story . However, to make it easier, you might want to focus on one topic at a time. For instance, write about the role of tradition and how powerful it can be.
• How are gender roles represented in the story? Look closer to how the roles are divided in this fictional society. There is violence against women, but it doesn’t seem like they are allowed to play victims. Can you catch a glimpse of sexism in some situations? You might as well draw some parallels with the real world.
• How much do traditions affect our lives? The Lottery as an example . In this analysis essay on The Lottery , you are asked to elaborate on the central theme of the story. Shirley Jackson shows tradition to be so strong and powerful in this society that the rational mind can’t even bring others to reason.
• Social classes in The Lottery . Are there any characters in the short story that may seem a bit more privileged than the others? All villagers seem to be in the same boat with equal rights. What about Mr. Summers? His name is on the list, and he draws with everybody else, but doesn’t he have more powers?
• The psychology of the crowd in the short story . You are asked to write an argumentative essay on The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. Look for some strong arguments to support the idea. However, there is no need to come up with complicated psychoanalytic theories. Focus on your personal opinion and add some quotes.
• Hidden symbols in Shirley Jackson’s story . Here, it would help if you worked on literary analysis for a little bit. There are some apparent symbols, such as the black box and the stones. But how many more can you find? For example, look at the importance of households and write a symbolism essay on The Lottery .
• Investigate the phenomenon of hypocrisy in The Lottery . The villagers can be friendly and kind to their neighbors before the ritual begins . However, as soon as they know the results, they immediately turn against “the winner.” Tessie seems like she would do the same, but when she appears to be the chosen one, it doesn’t please her at all.
• Tessie Hutchinson as a scapegoat in The Lottery . What can make you think that the main character serves as a scapegoat for the villagers? She might not have a good reputation among them. What do you think drives them to stone her to death? Start a debate on this issue, and don’t forget to use our literature study guide!
• The significance of names in Shirley Jackson’s story . You might have noticed the specifics of the main characters’ names. For instance, Mr. Summers fits perfectly in the setting of a beautiful summer day. Mr. Delacroix, in his turn, carries some hidden religious meaning if you look up the translation. Can you find any other meaningful names?
• What is the central message of The Lottery ? You might have thought about it after reading the summary of the short story. Well, there is no specific answer because everything depends on your perspective. It may concern social or political issues or whatever you prefer. It is what makes your essay so unique, isn’t it?

✒️ The Lottery: Essay Samples

Below you’ll find a collection of The Lottery essay examples. You are welcome to use them for inspiration!

• Point of View in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
• The Lottery Analysis: Essay on Shirley Jackson’s Short Story
• The Lottery: Literary Analysis
• Groupthink Notion in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
• Gothic Horror in “The Lottery”
• Foreshadowing in The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
• Crowd Impersonation in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
• Gender Equality in Jackson’s “The Lottery”
• Herd Behavior in “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to LinkedIn
• Share to email

On a warm sunny day, all the villagers gathered to kill their randomly chosen neighbor. They had repeated this ritual for many ages. What forced them to be so cold-hearted and narrow-minded? Why did the first readers of the short story get insulted with the plot? What does Shirley Jackson...

A short summary of The Lottery comes down to a description of a pretty violent tradition of one community. Despite a quite optimistic and positive beginning, the reader will soon find out that something feels off about it. The community uses the lottery to pick one person for a sacrifice....

This article by Custom-Writing.org experts contains all the information about the characters in The Lottery by Shirley Jackson: Tessie Hutchinson, Bill Hutchinson, Mr. Summers, Old Man Warner, and others. In the first section, you’ll find The Lottery character map. 🗺️ The Lottery: Character Map Below you’ll find a character map...

What do the stones symbolize in The Lottery? What about the black box? What is its main theme? There are so many questions to attend to about this story, so this article by Custom-Writing.org experts is here to help you out! Apart from discussing the symbolism in The Lottery, we...

The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant is a short story, which focuses on the differences between appearance and reality. Here, we’ll talk more about the story, plot, the central conflict, characters, themes, and symbols. In The Necklace study guide, you will also learn about the genre and the author’s message....

Writing an essay can be a challenge, even from the very beginning. Coming up with an eye-catching and exciting idea might be a bit of a process. Therefore, we have prepared a list of topics on The Necklace to choose from. Also, you can find essay samples and take a...

The Necklace is one of the most famous short stories that talks about a woman whose dreams of wealth got shattered. The author Guy De Maupassant uses several literary devices, such as metaphors or symbolism, to enhance the reader’s perception. So, what does the necklace symbolize in The Necklace? What...

The Necklace is a sensational story with an unexpected twist in the end. In the article, we will discuss theme of The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant. The literary analysis will show their importance for a better understanding of the story. The Necklace themes include Appearance vs. Reality and Greed....

The Necklace by Guy De Maupassant is an astonishing short story capturing readers’ attention with its realistic plot and an unexpected twist in the end. This article will focus on describing The Necklace’s main characters. So, who is the protagonist in The Necklace? Keep reading to find out more about...

The Necklace (French: La Parure) is a short story written by Guy de Maupassant in 1884. The story became an instant success, as most of the other works written by Guy de Maupassant. In the article, you’ll see its brief summary and analysis. The Necklace: Summary The Necklace by Guy...

Welcome to the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight study guide! Here, you will find all the essential information about the poem’s plot and genre. You will also learn about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight story’s characters, themes, and symbols. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Key Facts Full...

Assigned to write an essay about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, you may face difficulties coming up with a good topic. This page can help you with that. Here you will find some of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight essay topics, prompts & samples. Essay Topics Language and...

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Tabula Rasa

By John McPhee

This is the fourth article in the “Tabula Rasa” series. Read Volumes One , Two , and Three .

The Wordle Philosophy

In a cogent sense, I have spent, at this writing, about eighty-eight years preparing for Wordle. I work with words, I am paid by the word, I majored in English, and today I major in Wordle. On the remote chance that someone in the English-speaking world who is unfamiliar with Wordle ever happens upon this essay, I should explain that Wordle is a simple, straightforward online game. Each day, a five-letter word is hiding in the cloud, and you have six guesses to name it. On a grid five squares wide and six rows high, you enter your first guess. If your first guess is correct, it was something like a fifteen-thousand-to-one shot and feels like winning a lottery. Wordle responds to your first guess by filling in the background of each of your letters with one of three colors. The background turns charcoal gray if the letter is not part of the day’s secret word, yellow if the letter is in the word but not in that position, and green if the letter is right for the position it is in.

You may choose ocean as your first guess, for example, and when you touch the Enter key the backgrounds of four of those letters fill in gray. The other is e and its background is now yellow. E is in the word you seek but not in the middle, as it is in ocean . You study this graphic information, and carefully devise a second guess. You have known since pre-K that in English there are five and a half vowels and 20.5 consonants. Vowels grease the skids, so a useful second guess will include other vowels. Try suite . Enter. A gray background fills in behind the s and the u . The t turns yellow. The e in its new position remains yellow, but the i is green. You go off into a confidence-rattling realm of digraphs and rogue “y”s. You think “realm” might be the target word someday. You sober up. If succeeding in two is just a luckshot feat (I did it nine times last year), the third guess is in the insight zone. With a nervous pen, I list letters that remain available, and I get out my digraph chart, featuring thirty-some items like “bl,” “th,” “tr,” “sh,” “gn,” “sl,” and “cr.” I stare at suite . With that i green in the middle, the t and e yellow, I try tried . Enter. The i and the e are now green and so is the t ! At this point—the fourth guess—Wordle often seems to be playing itself. Statistically, about half of my Wordlequests end in four. After tried , I try thief , and the five squares in the fourth row turn green and wiggle.

The Guess Levels of Wordle 1. Lottery 2. Luckshot 3. Insight 4. Autodidact 5. Buffoon 6. D.U.I.

I know a research physicist at the Institut Polytechnique in Paris whom Wordle put out of business with “wryly.” He could be done in again, slyly. After a streak of a hundred straight successes, I was busted on the hundred-and-first, by two vowels and two “r”s: “riper.” Two months later, I am not over it and don’t hope to be. Ocean, juice, tiger, cider, river, riser— busted .

You can start with any five-letter word you choose, as long as it isn’t proper. I have used vague, suave, juice, poise, abode, quoit, laity, voice, ideal, cameo, abide, cause, maize, orate, image, moxie, outer, arise, vireo, viola, emoji, patio, radio, louse, vogue, biota, sauce, laude, route, gauze, aerie, ounce, adieu, ouija, aside, mouse, audio, ratio, media, abuse, avoid, outre, omega, imbue, beaut, audit, ukase, movie, raise, irate, pause, atone, curie, rouse, and yodel, but my all-time preference is ocean.

Ocean, chair, batch, yacht—a mid-March progression, just one more example from the autodidact zone, but it caused me to wonder about the “ch” in “yacht.” What would an expert call it? A silent digraph? I wrote to Mary Norris. Once known as the Pencil Lady, Mary is the author of books on language (“Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen,” “Greek to Me”) and for several decades was a copy editor, grammarian, query proofreader, and page O.K.’er at The New Yorker . She would not be intimidated by the “ch” in “yacht.”

It’s a “velar fricative,” Mary wrote back. “That is the actual name of the ch in yacht. I’d call it a vestigial guttural consonant cluster and avoid having it for breakfast. From the Dutch (jaght), who always sound like they’re choking. It took me all day yesterday!”

Proofreading

A cover story I wrote sixty years ago for Time declared that Richard Burton was not petty. The piece went to press, and when the magazine came out it said that Burton was not pretty. Meaningless typos are bad enough, but typos that make sense are exponentially worse: “cook” for “look,” “fool” for “cool,” “lust” for “must,” “sissy fit” for “hissy fit.” The first law of proofreading is that no one cares as much as the author, with the possible exception of the author’s mother.

My mother, who died at the age of a hundred, read the galley proofs of every one of my books as long as she was able to. When both of us were done, we compared galleys. Always, she found typos I had not, and vice versa. We both found typos that had not been found by the editors and proofreaders of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, my publisher. My mother had an occasional question for me. Why did I lowercase “god”? Why was “God” sometimes uppercased? “There are different ways to say god damn it,” I said, and suggested that we move along.

Link copied

Reading proofs one time, I came upon a sentence in which 1492, a presumed error, had been changed to 1942. Crack a joke and watch it disappear. The 1492 was just hyperbole, a way of saying “ages ago.” Forget it. In the same set of proofs, fifty million shad were migrating up the Columbia River. Fifty million was an error ten times fact. Where did it come from? The New Yorker ? No. In the magazine, five million shad went up the river. The mistake was unaccountable, but also caught. In my book contracts with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, a clause added long ago states that if other publishing houses are licensed to publish my paperbacks they will require that their professional proofreaders meet with me and compare what we have found. The need for such contractual clauses first arose after a paperback “Encounters with the Archdruid” arrived in the mail with a color photograph of the Grand Canyon on the cover, all but obscured by two pen-and-ink sketches of the head of David Brower, the protagonist, and each head had a cartoon balloon coming out of its mouth containing a quote from Brower.

As a result of this excrescence, I asked for contractual approval of paperback covers. Roger Straus agreed. In time, the number of such clauses added to my contracts would exceed thirty-five. Meanwhile, not long after the “Archdruid” catastrophe but with the new clauses in the contracts, Farrar, Straus licensed the paperbacks of “The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed” and “The Curve of Binding Energy” to Ballantine Books. The cover art was sent to me for my approval. “The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed” was about an experimental aircraft—a hybrid of an airplane and a rigid airship—that could fly like a plane and land on a dime, and would revolutionize air-freight transportation. The project happened to have been initiated and continued to be run by Presbyterian ministers. Ballantine’s cover ignored aviation and showed a guy in a clerical collar looking holy. “The Curve of Binding Energy” was about special nuclear material in the hands of private industry and the possibility of its being stolen by subnational groups for purposes of making atomic bombs. Ballantine’s cover art consisted of a large keyhole, through which the reader could peep at a subnational group making a bomb—Blacks, Chicanos, white hoodlums in leather jackets and shades.

So I rejected both Ballantine covers. Ballantine’s solution was to do them over as all-type covers, no pictures or drawings. Ballantine also told Roger Straus never again to submit to them a book by me. So Roger made a paperback deal with Bantam Books for “Coming Into the Country,” my book on Alaska. I went to Bantam myself for a talk with its president, in which I said that my book was essentially about people who had migrated to Alaska from the Lower Forty-eight, and that the last thing appropriate for the paperback cover was a big fat Eskimo in a wolf ruff. Bantam sent the book to an artist in Wales. Back from Wales came a big fat Eskimo in a wolf ruff. Bantam shrugged and changed the cover.

Meanwhile, the text had to be proofread. Bantam hired a professional and required that she go through her finished read with me. We met at Bantam’s offices, in Manhattan, and she was not just cold; she was furious. She said she did not miss typos and did not make mistakes, and being summoned to go over proofs with me was a personal and professional insult. I said I was sorry she felt that way, but that I had many times experienced the need to compare proofs, and had it in my contracts. Could we just sit down and make the best of it? In some sort of cubicle there, we sat down and made the best of it. On the second or third galley was a typo corrected by her that I had completely missed. Next came a typo that she had not found. It surprised her. We found others that I had missed, then two more that she had missed. She said she was embarrassed, and quietly began to apologize. I told her not to, told her she was obviously better at it than I was, and her discoveries were rescuing my book. Tension was turning into compatibility, and I think I can say that both of us enjoyed the rest of that morning together.

Typographical errors are more elusive than cougars. One of my sons-in-law, the poet Mark Svenvold, wrote a nonfiction book called “Big Weather,” about tornadoes and people who chase them, from meteorologists to simple gawkers. Mark went to Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas, and rode around with both categories. When “Big Weather” appeared in hardcover, a sentence in the opening paragraph mentioned “the Gulf of New Mexico.” Where did that mutinous “New” come from, a typo right up there with “pretty” for “petty”? Mark said it was unaccountable. For a starter, I suggested that he look in his computer, if the original manuscript was still there. It was, and in that first paragraph was the Gulf of New Mexico. Remarkable, yes, but think where that paragraph had been. It had been read by a literary agent, an acquisitions editor, an editorial assistant, a copy editor, a professional proofreader, at least one publicity editor—and not one of these people had noticed the goddam Gulf of New Mexico.

Long ago, it occurred to me that after my death I might regret not having written a literary will. In my relationships with publishers other than The New Yorker and Roger Straus—and, truth be told, in scattered moments with them—I had reached for enough band-aids to make the impetus acute. So I wrote a literary will. It was appended to my contract for “The Ransom of Russian Art,” which was published in 1994, and has been in the contract for each of the eight books that have followed. It applies to earlier books as well, and is meant to provide instructions, down to the last comma, for future handling of my work. Almost any prose paragraph can be dated to the era in which it was written. In any swatch of prose, neologisms will stand out. I worried that some editors, while meaning to be helpful and useful, might modernize the text and paralyze the writing. Basically, my wish is that things be left as they are. The will:

It is my wish that future editors respect my thoughts about various matters like inches versus centimetres and miles versus kilometres and the choice in which altitude is expressed and personal habits of punctuation and so forth. In the case of the units of measure, I have used both (but mainly the English system) because we are living in a time of transition, and, in the United States at the moment, both apply. Sometimes, to express that fact indirectly—and for rhythm, and for other considerations—I have used metric measurements in one part of a sentence and English measurements in another. But never do I say something like “seventeen miles (27.359 kilometres)” because that is oafish, and I hope and pray that no sentence of mine is ever “improved” in such manner by a well-meaning editor who doctors my texts so that the two forms of measurement are presented in linear translation. Equally, I would spin in my grave if such an editor were to change an English measurement to a metric measurement, ruining whatever flow and rhythm the sentence in its original form managed to achieve. If something is in inches, feet, miles, leave it just as is, even after the entire country has embraced the metric system and miles have gone the way of leagues and rods. In general, please follow to the letter—and to the last absent or present punctuation mark—the Farrar, Straus & Giroux editions of my books. If you do, you will not dismantle various idiosyncrasies of style and punctuation that I chose to employ or create. If a comma is not there, please do not insert it. If commas are not there in adjectival strings, it was my intention that commas not be there. If you come upon an exxecutive, preserve him. He worked for Exxon. If, in “In Suspect Terrain,” you come upon the words “new and far between,” the words I intended were “new and far between.” If William Penn’s daughter wants a “rod and real,” stet “real.” If someone is “called to an office and chewed,” do not add “out.” In that instance, I preferred to leave it out. If a rule is probed, as in “the exception that probes the rule,” stet “probes.” If something is described as “avalanchine,” I did not intend to say “avalanching.” If the text says “porpentine,” please do not change it to “porcupine.” Where “The Founding Fish” refers to Reds Grange, Reds plural is what I meant. In “La Place de la Concorde Suisse,” foreign words are not italicized—and are not to be italicized. The same applies to “Tabula Rasa.” In the title piece of “Giving Good Weight,” the rationale with respect to italics was more complex. Please carefully follow the original text in FSG editions. In “Annals of the Former World” and its component books, if updating is done in the light of advances in scientific research please cover such matters in footnotes. Please also handle in footnotes and not in textual alterations anything to do with money, including but not limited to pounds, guineas, shillings, halfpennies, farthings, francs, pesetas, lire, dollars, Deutschmarks, yen, and euros. Titles are never to be altered. And please never title a collection of my work “The Best of . . . .” Such titles are false in nature and demean work that is not included. In my various books, photographs, drawings, charts, maps, and the like have been used sparingly or not at all. That was intentional. I wanted the pictures to be done in words. I don’t mean to lay down a rigid guideline here, but please consider respectfully the editions of my lifetime and use them generally as models. They are fairly but not wholly consistent. For example, more than two dozen maps were made specifically for “Annals of the Former World” by Raven Maps & Images, of Medford, Oregon. In “The Ransom of Russian Art,” the reproductions of dissidents’ paintings are integral components of the book and their locations within it are not random. Notes underlying this literary will and other items that may have occurred to me after this date are in my computer in a Kedit file called Litwill.FSG. My books have been proofread with exceptional care by proofreaders at FSG, by proofreaders at The New Yorker magazine, by myself, and by others. In more than a million words, there are probably fewer than ten typographical errors. Please do not fix one unless textual evidence allows you to be absolutely positive that you have found one of those ten. I warmly thank you for your attention to these words.

In the Journalism and Creative Writing programs at Princeton University, the course I taught consisted of twelve seminars and a picnic, not to mention scheduled private conferences in which I pretended to be the student’s editor and we went through my marginalia on the student’s latest essay one semicolon at a time. Not a few former students have kept my marginalia and throw them back at me from time to time, even in public settings. There were no exams. The picnic, in May, was under a monument on the Princeton Battlefield or in a park pavilion beside the Delaware and Raritan Canal, or back in the classroom if it rained. B.Y.O. sandwiches. I brought the chips and the pretzels. I also brought paper, pencils, some photocopied syntactical entertainment, and two tests.

The syntactical entertainment included actual statements by car drivers on insurance forms:

As I reached an intersection, a hedge sprang up obscuring my vision and I did not see the other car. In my attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole. The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him. The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intentions. The indirect cause of the accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.

Obtained from university presses were swatches of professorial prose in the original manuscripts of scholarly books:

This serial procedure is of course slower than the parallel one, but it takes much longer. The meeting had been preceded by some prior ones. These three men all received their degrees from the University of Chicago where they first became friends, and later each was to be a preceptor at Princeton and still later to become three of the leaders of the American mathematical community.

The three men evidently became nine.

The dissertation was written in a single draft with no revisions in order to retain an interpretive stance. As a result, there is some repetition and some ponderous expressions, and the total is rather long.

The late Charles Patrick Crow was an editor of nonfiction pieces at The New Yorker . He did not acquire manuscripts. They were assigned to him after they were bought. With the exceptions of fly-fishing and family, Crow had a distanced, not to say cynical, view of most aspects of this world. He kept in his wallet a little blue card that bore selected sentences from manuscripts bought by the magazine:

Very likely, if we knew the answer to this question we wouldn’t have to ask it. Until the orchestra didn’t exist, composers didn’t write music for it, and instrumentalists didn’t form such groups because there was no music for them to perform. Grey-haired, yet crewcut, he was clean, precise and appeared somewhat cold, just as one would expect a surgeon. These two atolls being studied prior to returning the people that had been removed from those atolls prior to the nuclear testing.

I also offered the young writers a parable from particle physics, quite possibly the oddest metaphor ever applied to the writing process. The weapons designer Theodore B. Taylor, whose atomic bombs were very small and very large, spent a lot of time worrying about the slow production of plutonium. He thought of a solution to the problem. In my book “The Curve of Binding Energy,” I tried to describe it:

The A.E.C.’s plants at Hanford and Savannah River were literally dripping it out, and Ted thought he saw a way to make a truly enormous amount of plutonium in a short time. He wanted to wrap up an H-bomb in a thick coat of uranium and place it deep in arctic ice. When it was detonated, the explosion would make plutonium-239 by capturing neutrons in uranium-238—exactly what happened in a reactor. The explosion would also turn a considerable amount of ice into a reservoir of water, which could easily be pumped out to a chemical plant on the surface, where the plutonium would be separated out. Why not?

There were those who had an answer to that question, and Ted Taylor’s MICE —megaton ice-contained explosions—would serve only as a message to young writers: No matter what kind of writing you are doing, you want desperately to get it done. You yearn for one great, perfect, and explosive outburst. Impossible. Like a driver reactor, you have to drip it out.

That was the serious finale of my course, but I always had more to impose. Passing out pencils and sheets of paper, I informed the picnicking class that the time had come for their final exam (an event of which they had not previously been aware). O.K., I would say, hoping and failing to shake them up, this is your final exam. Everything rides on it, including the honor system. Write these twenty words and spell them correctly. Moccasin.

I gave them plenty of time to wonder if there were two “c”s and two “s”s or one “c” and two “s”s or two “c”s and one “s.” Next?

Braggadocio.

Rarefy, liquefy, pavilion, vermilion, impostor, accommodate. By now, they were flunking out. Years before I even started to teach, I had clipped the test from Esquire , where T. K. Brown III, compiler of the twenty words, wrote that “impostor” is the most misspelled word in the English language and “accommodate” is the word misspelled in the greatest variety of ways.

Mayonnaise.

Impresario.

Supersede, desiccate, titillate, resuscitate, inoculate, rococo, consensus, sacrilegious, obbligato.

Raise your hand if you spelled all twenty correctly.

In 1975, Nina Gilbert raised her hand.

Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen . . . Across the years, zero to very few hands would go up until the countdown got into the twelve-to-six range. After six, for humanitarian reasons, I stopped asking for hands. At Nina Gilbert’s level, in five decades, no one else would raise a hand.

Nina Gilbert was a music major. She became an arranger and composer of choral music, ran education programs for the Boston Lyric Opera, and taught sequentially at Hamilton, Lafayette, U.C. Irvine, and the Webb Schools, in Claremont, California.

There was a last and deceptive segment of the final exam. The deceptive aspect was that it seemed simple and wasn’t. There are eleven words in the English language that end in “umble.” What are they?

Pencils flew as the students attacked this easy question. Bumble, crumble, fumble, grumble, humble, jumble, mumble, rumble, stumble, tumble . . . Ten quick words. The luck stopped there. Erasers were bitten into. Like lamps turning off, success turned into failure. Logoparalysis set in.

One year, after the picnic, I happened to get a call from my daughter Sarah, in Atlanta, and I told her about the eleven words in the English language that end in “umble.” Could she name them?

Sarah said, “Well, let’s see. There’s ‘scumble,’ and . . .”

The elusive eleventh was Sarah’s first umble. She is an architectural historian, at this writing chair of art history at Emory University. Scumble is a delicate, final layer that painters have used to give their subjects the appearance of being seen through mist. Webster’s Second International defines it as a verb, “to render less brilliant by covering with a thin coat of opaque or semiopaque color applied with a nearly dry brush,” and as a noun, “a softened effect produced by scumbling.” The technique was employed by Titian in the sixteenth century, Rubens and Rembrandt in the seventeenth, J. M. W. Turner in the nineteenth, Claude Monet on into the twentieth—Monet’s scumbled water lilies, the scumbled ambience of his Rouen Cathedral.

As it happens, scumble is what I see all day long, or something much like it. Ninety-two at this writing, I have a stent in each eyeball as a result of advanced glaucoma. My world is brushed with mist. I mentioned scumble to my eye surgeon, Sarah Kuchar. She said she is always looking for ways to describe what her patients see, and she was gratefully adding “scumble” to her vocabulary.

Alfred A. Knopf

The New Yorker I joined in 1965 did not publish profiles of dead people. When I turned in a piece about an old person, William Shawn, the magazine’s one-man constitution, considerately published it soon after I submitted it. I once thought of doing a profile of Alfred A. Knopf, who was born in 1892, but I never did so, in part because of the age factor, and in part, truth be told, because the piece might have been redolent with spite. In college, I had written, as a “creative thesis,” a stillborn novel that was little more than an academic exercise. Whatever life it might have had expired as it was written. But of course, at the time, I did not assess it as such, and I sent it to several New York publishers, who rejected it seriatim—Random House, Charles Scribner’s Sons, Alfred A. Knopf. Dudley Johnson, one of my professors in the English department, competing with me in naïveté, suggested that I write to Alfred Knopf himself, asking for the readers’ reports. From them, said Johnson, I might glean thoughts that would serve me well in future efforts.

Alfred himself wrote back to me, saying that his company never released its readers’ reports, adding, gratuitously, this:

The readers’ reports in the case of your manuscript would not be very helpful, and I think might discourage you completely.

This was the letter that caused my mother to say, “Someone should go in there and k-nock his block off.”

Two decades later, when some of my longer pieces were running in The New Yorker —“Encounters with the Archdruid,” “The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed,” “The Curve of Binding Energy”—I had to commute from my home in New Jersey to the magazine’s offices, at 25 West Forty-third Street, because the technology that would eventually make it possible to close a piece remotely was far off in the future. So I was in the city for weeks at a time, and I often had lunch with Anthony M. Schulte, an employee at the publishing house Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., where he was a rising star.

Bob Gottlieb, who worked there with Tony and some years later became the editor of The New Yorker , told the New York Times in 2012, “Tony was a rare fossil—a gentleman publisher.” Tony had drowned in one of the Rangeley Lakes, in Maine. He dove into the lake on his first day there in that 2012 season, and did not come up.

I had known Tony since he was nine years old and I was eight. He would be educated at Yale and the Harvard Business School. His career in publishing began at Simon & Schuster and moved on to Knopf and eventually to Random House, which owned Knopf. We had met at the summer camp Keewaydin, near Middlebury, Vermont, and had proceeded together, through its several age levels, on hiking trips in the Green Mountains and long canoe trips in the Adirondacks, both Maine and Canada being out of range because of gas rationing and other limitations during the Second World War. We made the Honor Trip, in Saranac country, including streams, ponds, and portages west of Upper Saranac Lake. Tony was a boxer. On Saturday evenings at Keewaydin, under overhead lights, he slowly and methodically stalked his opponents, always with a gentle smile, and when the bout ended after three rounds the ref always lifted Tony’s arm. Always. Summer after summer, he was Best Boxer. There was also an award for Best Camper, and, annually, Tony Schulte won that, too.

In this narrative, I have now come to the day I have been aiming at, on which I showed up at the Knopf offices to collect Tony and go to lunch. I was standing beside Tony’s desk while Tony shuffled some last-minute memos and stood up to go. His office door was open to a corridor and, just then, Alfred Knopf walked by. The year was in the seventies, Knopf in his eighties. Tony called to him, “Alfred, come in a minute. There’s someone here I want you to meet.”

Knopf joined us, and Tony said, “Alfred, this is John McPhee.” In that exact instant, seemingly cued by my name, Alfred Knopf’s eyes narrowed to a stare, and his arms stiffened at his sides. Very slowly, his arms began to rise, came up like wings, while his falcon eyes stayed on me and blazed. The arms went on up until they were high above his head.

By now, of course, Tony and I had realized that Alfred Knopf was having a seizure. Tony wondered if I knew what to do. I did not. Tony called out to Knopf’s assistant, and she summoned an in-house first responder. This was not Alfred’s first working seizure. Tony and I went off to lunch. ♦

New Yorker Favorites

The day the dinosaurs died .

What if you started itching— and couldn’t stop ?

How a notorious gangster was exposed by his own sister .

Woodstock was overrated .

Diana Nyad’s hundred-and-eleven-mile swim .

Photo Booth: Deana Lawson’s hyper-staged portraits of Black love .

Fiction by Roald Dahl: “The Landlady”

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Kathryn Schulz

By Steve Martin

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

By André Alexis