Setting

Physical setting

The events in the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson take place in a fictional society which organises a yearly lottery that ends with the stoning of one of its community members. This lottery takes place in the summer, usually on the 27th of June. Bigger communities, however, have to organise a two-day lottery: “in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th” (p. 25, ll. 7-9).

The story begins in an unnamed village on the traditional lottery date: “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square.” (p. 25, ll. 2-6). The fact that the village is unnamed, and that it is one of many communities which organise the lottery also suggest that the society portrayed in the story is accustomed to violence.

It is important to notice that the narrator’s ...