Kristel wrote: "I have read the lottery just now (being sick has some advantages). I think Shirley is really brilliant in depicting the dark side of the human race. She tries to look behind the facade and granted,..."

You know, you make a good point. Think how many small towns have weird traditions/customs/habits. Shirley picked stoning to over-emphasize this point, but it's to show the mob mentality of humans. When we were all still new to the world and living in clans and it was us versus mother nature, tradition was good. It kept us alive. But our physical and security needs have outgrown this even though our mentality (or basic instinct) hasn't.

I have read the lottery just now (being sick has some advantages). I think Shirley is really brilliant in depicting the dark side of the human race. She tries to look behind the facade and granted, all Shirley sees are the evil treats...

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The small town where the lottery takes place is just such a typical small town, with white picket fences, smiling happy children, moms baking applepies...OK so they get to stone on of the inhabitants once a year, tradition is tradition. That's maybe what struck me the most, the tradition in the lotterystory. We have always done it like this...they don't listen when someone says that some other towns have abolished the lottery. It has always been this way and for the order of things it has to remain this way. In a way, that's how it was and still is in small towns all over the planet I guess, change is bad, tradition is good, even if it's a tradition that doesn't make sence like stoning someone once a year.

Sheila wrote: "I thought she imagined him as well. A tall man in a blue suit isn't very specific. She was bound to find someone who had seen a man fitting that description. And even the Roysters didn't recognize ..."
My thoughts exactly Sheila, the story juts left me with a sad feeling. That woman got her hopes up so high, so sad and desperate.

I thought she imagined him as well. A tall man in a blue suit isn't very specific. She was bound to find someone who had seen a man fitting that description. And even the Roysters didn't recognize his name, just that a tall man who owned a blue suit had stayed there. I just found the whole thing extremely sad.

I think she did. So many of Jackson's female characters were right on the brink of becoming unhinged...and were always imagining different lives for themselves. I think she was probably mentally ill...

"The Daemon Lover" really stuck with me. Did she just imagine this man?!

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The thing I love most about "The Lottery" is that I found it as freaky today as I did back in 8th grade when I first read it, and this time I knew how it was going to end. Despite that knowledge, I still kept waiting for someone to say 'hey, lets think about this first', but no one other than Mrs. Hutchinson ever really does. And this line Nancy and Bill, Jr, opened theirs at the same time, both beamed and laughed, turning around to the crowd and holding their slips of paper above their heads. I can understand being relieved that it isn't you, but the fact that they don't seem more upset over it being one of their parents gives me the chills. The whole unquestioning 'group think' thing is so unnerving to read.

"The Daemon Lover" was the most uncomfortable for me because the woman reminded me of someone I know. It was quite unsettling, which is probably the point.

I remember the name 'Harris' coming up a lot. Your post, Alison, makes me think of Agent Smith in The Matrix...

Isn't it interesting how everyone is called a Mrs. or Mr., no matter how well acquainted? I can't think of many people that I speak with that get a spoken title.

I think my favorite was "Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors" because, while being a short little tale, it says so much. It's amazing where paranoia and panic can set in, once a little seed is planted. Shirley Jackson could say so much about people in such a few, short pages.

As far as leaving you with a sense of completion, I think it was Jackson's style to end before the climax. She left the reader with very open endings, and we were meant to deduct our own meaning. I have to admit after reading a few of them, I was like...what the heck???? Actually, I guess in particular the second one, about the Demon Lover.

Did anyone notice the same man's name coming up in different stories. Sometimes he used a nickname...hold on...I have to look it up.

It was James Harris...also called Jamie, and other nicknames, too, that I can't recall right now. I thought it was genius the way she weaved him throughout the stories..like he was this evil force, or the devil himself.

I guess I was the only one that didn't like this book. It made me feel sad in some of the situations, but most of the time...I felt like I had been cheated. The stories didn't leave me with a feeling of completion. I'm actually looking forward to taking this book back!

Except for in The Lottery, nothing violent or scary really happens but a lot of her stories just give me this creepy, dark vibe. I especially found that vibe in the ones set in NYC. I guess she really didn't like city life.

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I did think "Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors" was hilarious! My favorite so far has been "The Witch" because while the guy that tells the kid about creatively killing and then cutting his own sister's head off and feeding it to a caged bear is proprietorially way out of line, he recognized exactly what the kid wanted and loved and reveled in the telling of it. It was at once a disturbing story and completely fantastic because the kid's imagination just devoured it delightedly and then dismissed it. Maybe I'm just a bit twisted, too... :D


I haven't read this one, but your description immediately brings to mind, Grimm and Anderson fairy tales. Also, Tom and Jerry or Bugs Bunny cartoons. It's interesting that each generation has their own stories that horrify the next but that current generation thinks it fascinating and fun and no big deal. I wonder if it's because kids, in general, understand on an intuitive level that this is a story and so whatever happens in a story isn't the same as what can happen in real life.

I mean, after the Home Alone movies, we didn't hear about a rash of bricks being thrown out of windows at people or sidewalks being made purposely icy. But how many kids thought the movies were hilarious?

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I read "After You, My Dear Alphonse," "The Renegade," and "The Witch" today, so they're fresh in my mind. I am enjoying these stories so much more than I expected. They are so haunting. I am trying to read them in order, but that means that The Lottery is last!

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Alison wrote: "Shirley Jackson had this amazing, albeit negative, perspective of people. Throughout all of these stories, I think she shows an underlying lack of trust and disregard for other people..."

Hmm. I just see Jackson as a really good observer of humanity. And someone who adeptly tells a story to point out societal pitfalls - way before it was vogue to do so - with a wry and slightly twisted sense of humor. Like the story "After You My Dear Alphonse," where the mother assumes the black kid's family is poor, needy, uneducated, and laborers. This was written long before the civil rights movement! Or in "The Renegade" where the unappreciated lady recently moved to the country has all these crazy expectations on her and she's falling apart. Worse, all her decisions are being made for her. This is pre-1950's wifely expectations, yet she's already showing how insane that is. It's like she uses her stories to say, "Tisk-tisk!"

I did think "Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors" was hilarious! My favorite so far has been "The Witch" because while the guy that tells the kid about creatively killing and then cutting his own sister's head off and feeding it to a caged bear is proprietorially way out of line, he recognized exactly what the kid wanted and loved and reveled in the telling of it. It was at once a disturbing story and completely fantastic because the kid's imagination just devoured it delightedly and then dismissed it. Maybe I'm just a bit twisted, too... :D

Look forward to finishing it soon!

Lindsay wrote: "I remember reading the Lottery for school, and it gave me nightmares, those kind of stories do, so I haven't picked up any of her other works. Its like when I read the Handmaid's Tale by Attwood. ..."

Lindsay, you should try her (Atwood's) other works. Except for Oryx and Crake, the rest are just "normal" fiction and nothing too scary. She's from Canada, so a lot of them take place in Toronto, and not much scary happens in Toronto. heh

I remember reading the Lottery for school, and it gave me nightmares, those kind of stories do, so I haven't picked up any of her other works. Its like when I read the Handmaid's Tale by Attwood. I haven't touched any of her other works even though she is an amazing author.

Kristi wrote: "I have started the book, but haven't gotten to The Lottery yet. I really like the stories that I have already read, so I look forward to getting to the others. I had not heard of Shirley Jackson ..."

If you like her short stories, you should try her novels. They're not very long and have that creepy but makes you think vibe too.

Alison wrote: "Shirley Jackson had this amazing, albeit negative, perspective of people. Throughout all of these stories, I think she shows an underlying lack of trust and disregard for other people. In The Lot..."

I've wondered that myself (about Jackson) because her portrayals of "the others" are so horrible. One has to think she has a few incidents in her own life to draw from as it feels like they come from a real place. I would say probably its a bit a both. People, when prejudiced, are very ugly. But humans are known to be suspicious of every little thing (when no suspicion is warranted) if they are subjected to something long enough.

The Lottery to me is an analogy of happened in the Holocaust and Abu Grab more currently. We sit her in our warm comfy homes and tsk tsk it all, but if confronted between your life and these acts, what would you really choose? It is said that humans are programmed to survive at all costs.

I have started the book, but haven't gotten to The Lottery yet. I really like the stories that I have already read, so I look forward to getting to the others. I had not heard of Shirley Jackson until joining this book group.

Shirley Jackson had this amazing, albeit negative, perspective of people. Throughout all of these stories, I think she shows an underlying lack of trust and disregard for other people. In The Lottery, she's basically saying, look what can happen when people stop questioning what's happening, and just start to go with the flow. People end up killing each other, senselessly. And oh...........how this happens all over the world. It's the "group think", I think, that she abhorred.

So many of these stories have underlying themes of paranoia, and mental instability. Which carries over into her novels as well...Hill House...We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I read that alot of her stories stem from her experiences of trying to "fit in" in small-town Vermont. Which begs the question...are people really the way she saw them, or was the paranoid, mentally unstable one actually SJ herself?

Misty wrote: "I remember when I read this a few years ago (and I had read it before, of course, but never knew this) there was preface that said that after The Lottery was published, people were freaking out, wa..."

heh. nice catch.

I remember when I read this a few years ago (and I had read it before, of course, but never knew this) there was a preface that said that after The Lottery was published, people were freaking out, wanting to know the name of this village and why something wasn't being done. I just thought, really? Really? You think this is non-fiction? Because if so, you should be asking the name of the villageS, plural, because it says "...in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days..."

Yeah...

I like the way SJ tells stories that could happen in any town with just ordinary people. Small minds in small towns, really a suffocating atmosphere. I totally agree with Meghan: the realism is the spookiest part.

I remember reading this in 8th grade English and then having to read (The Lottery) again for 9th grade. It was chilling then as it is now. I think what makes Jackson so great is that she takes very real human emotions and paints them into these very black pictures. The scary part of her stories is that nagging sense of realism.

Let's begin our discussion of The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson. I read this a week ago in one sitting! I was quite enthralled. I'm officially a big SJ fan. Anyone want to get us started?