The Lottery

When "The Lottery" was first published in 1948, it created an enormous controversy and great interest in its author, Shirley Jackson.                                                      
        Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco, California on December 14, 1919.   When she was two years old, her family moved her to Burlingame, California, where Jackson attended high school.   After high school Jackson moved away to attend college at Rochester University in upstate New York but   after only a short time at Rochester and, after taking off a year from school, she moved on to Syracuse University.   At first, Jackson was in the School of Journalism at Syracuse but soon moved to the English Department to pursue her interest in writing.   Jackson soon started publishing works in the school news paper and eventually, she and a classmate and future husband, Stanley Hyman started their own magazine under the supervision of teacher, Leonard Brown, who Jackson later described as her mentor.  
After graduating from Syracuse in 1940, Jackson and college sweetheart Hyman married and moved to Vermont.   In Vermont, Jackson did a lot of writing, publishing many books, children's stories and humorous pieces, including a book about family life titled "Life among Savages."   "The Lottery" was a radical departure from the tone and contents of her other works.   (http://reagan.underthesun.cc/sjackson/sjackson1.html)
In 1948, Jackson wrote what turned out to be probably her most famous short story entitled "The Lottery."   When "The Lottery" appeared in the New Yorker, it created a huge controversy and received a lot of press for its dark psychological horror.   Many people believed that "The Lottery" was about how society can be cruel to individuals, the violence in society and the overwhelming need of humans to conform to the norms of society without regard to right or wrong.     Many people found the story gross and disgusting because of the surprising murder at the end of the... [continues]

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