A Stone’s Throw: How Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery Encapsulates the Southern Gothic 

Author

Abstract

Southern gothic literature utilizes themes and elements of the grotesque, social critique, violence, and, of course, religious undertones. Authors such as Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Cormac McCarthy have become icons in the genre, pioneering a new sense of horror in the familiar and the unconscious. When I began the search for this paper’s topic, I knew I wanted to cover something from the Southern Gothic space, and I wanted to focus on female authors. Back in English Composition 2, I was given the opportunity to student-teach The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and was surprised to learn that she was not named among Southern Gothic writers. The Lottery reads as classic Southern Gothic, and while Shirley Jackson is a markedly strong presence within the modern Horror genre, hers is a name that rarely surfaces in a Google search for Southern Gothic genre writers. Her short story is rife with those elements, of the grotesque in the familiar, religious tone, and social critique, how could Jackson not be mentioned more frequently? In this paper, I will be taking a psychoanalytical lens to the short story, and present Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery as a proper Southern Gothic text by examining 3 elements from the scene where the townspeople gather around the Black Box containing the Lottery, before fates are sealed. The actions of the citizens building up to the pinnacle of terror, the drawing of the name, give the readers much to fear before it is revealed what happens to the poor soul whose name is chosen from the ominous black box. 

Project: A Stone’s Throw: How Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery Encapsulates the Southern Gothic