I mostly read fantasy. I just finished a big book and needed a break. During cleaning I found this old, torn academic book. It had a short story inside, so I started reading. I had no idea what it was about and now I don’t even know how I feel.
How can a story so short have such a strong effect? It caught me completely off guard. From the beginning, I thought it was going to be about a joyous festival of some sort. But then that dark feeling kept creeping in, like a spider crawling behind my back. And that final reveal was deeply unsettling. I feel like Shirley Jackson managed to manipulate me in just 20 pages. I still can’t believe it was only that long.
This is the first story of hers I’ve read, and now I need to read more.
I do have some questions, though: Did the tradition begin as a sacrifice for a good harvest or something similar? And in the last passage, I had this feeling that the lottery was rigged somehow, was it?
by LibrariansNightmare
5 Comments
Ok, now I wish I hadn’t already been familiar with the story before I read it. I’m impressed you went this long without anyone telling you about it.
There’s a movie out there somewhere if you want to track it down. I think it was a TV movie.
Shirley Jackson rules.
It’s so great, isn’t it?
This was a short story which I too, much like you, stumbled upon. It absolutely scarred me. A while ago I wrote my own 500-word tribute to it:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/shortscarystories/comments/15a2cw1/the_citizenship_ceremony_at_shirljohhanes/](https://www.reddit.com/r/shortscarystories/comments/15a2cw1/the_citizenship_ceremony_at_shirljohhanes/)
The Lottery was in a Language Arts book that I had in 3rd grade in the 1970s. It was my introduction to horror, and I remember feeling the same way – I’d never been so excited to finish a story and want to reread it again.