I would argue that the opening paragraph of "The Lottery" is meant to lull the reader into a false sense of security, the better to make the shocking ending all the more effective.
As the story begins, it just seems like any other pleasant sunny summer's day in late June. The flowers are blossoming, the grass is richly green, and the locals are gathering together in the village square for a lottery. What could be more normal than that? At this early stage in the story we have no reason to think there's anything especially weird going on. It just seems like the kind of scene you'd witness in countless villages at this time of year across the length and breadth of America.
The fact that everything initially appears so normal, so civilized, makes subsequent events all the more disturbing. This is the last place on earth where we'd imagine such a barbaric ritual taking place. And even as the true nature of the lottery is finally revealed we still can't quite get our heads around the fact that something like this could happen in the middle of such an ordinary, regular village in the heart of New England.
This is largely because Jackson has constructed her story in such a way as to make the brilliant mid-summer sunshine of the opening paragraph a counterpoint to the moral darkness on display in this age-old ritual of human sacrifice. In figurative terms, the darkness prevails, but only against the literal backdrop of a glorious summer's day. It is this contrast of light and shade that discomforts the reader, making us more amenable to Jackson's disturbing suggestion that there is great evil lurking just beneath the surface of so-called civilized life.
No comments:
Post a Comment