Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Holocaust Literature

Michael Robinson

doi:10.3390/h8010035

Abstract

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” has been notorious since its first publication in 1948, but rarely, if ever, has it been read in light of its immediate historical context. This essay draws on literature, philosophy, and anthropology from the period to argue that Jackson’s story, which scholars have traditionally read through the lens of gender studies, invokes the themes of Holocaust literature. To support this argument, the essay explores imaginative Holocaust literature from the period by David Rousset, whose Holocaust memoir The Other Kingdom appeared in English translation in 1946, anthropological discourse from the period on scapegoating and European anti-Semitism, and critical discourse on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism from the period by Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno. The analysis finds that, in representing the phenomena of scapegoating and death selection in a small town in the US, Jackson’s story belongs to an abstract discourse on Holocaust-related themes and topics that was actively produced at midcentury, as evidenced partly by Rousset’s influential memoir. A master of the horror genre, Jackson could have drawn on her own experience of anti-Semitism, along with her known interest in the study of folklore, to contribute this chilling representation of the personal experience of death selection to a discourse on Holocaust-related themes. As this article shows, the abstract discourse Jackson’s story joined is marked by skepticism about or disinterest in ethnic difference and anthropological concepts. Due to the fact that this article features comparative analysis of Holocaust literature, a sub-topic is the debate among scholars concerning the ethics of literary representation of the Shoah and of analysis of Holocaust memoir. Jackson’s story and its context invoke perennially important questions about identity and representation in discourse about the Shoah and anti-Semitism.

Highlights

26 June 2018, marked the 70th anniversary of the publication of one of the most notorious stories published in The New Yorker, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (1948)
L’Univers concentraitionnaire (1946), a literary Holocaust memoir strongly marked by both yet notably muted on the subject of the Jewish genocide, exerted an influence on intellectual discourse about the Holocaust at midcentury
Parallel themes, and a conceptual framework shared with the broader discourse about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, Jackson’s story has traditionally been read ahistorically as a horror tale about social regress with feminist overtones

Summary

Introduction

26 June 2018, marked the 70th anniversary of the publication of one of the most notorious stories published in The New Yorker, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (1948). I argue that in representing the phenomena of scapegoating and death selection in a small town in the US, Jackson’s story belongs to an abstract discourse on Holocaust-related themes that was being actively produced at the time of writing, as evidenced in part by Rousset’s influential memoir. Making such a claim necessitates discussion of the Holocaust in terms of literature and analysis of a survivor’s discourse, both of which raise ethical questions. Despite these many reasons to read “The Lottery” in light of its immediate historical context, mention of genocidal violence, anti-Semitism, scapegoating and the Shoah is notably absent from scholarship about the story

Patriarchal Domination in “The Lottery”

Themes of the Holocaust in “The Lottery”

Conclusions