"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson was a very shocking story when it was published in 1948, and it was carefully designed to be shocking because the author presents an image of conformity that seems benign but proves to be horrifying. By doing this, she brings home to the reader how debilitating conformity itself is as something that saps individual will and responsibility and substitutes a community sense of right and wrong. The people of this small village are more frightening to the reader precisely because they are so normal. Until the last moments of the story, they seem very normal, and their activities are such as might be found in villages across the country. Yet there is also a certain sense throughout the story that something is wrong, that this normalcy is an illusion, and that the people have surrendered too much of their autonomy to the group. Part of the shock this story gave readers was the fact that they could recognize themselves in the people of the village. These people seemed much like themselves--eager to please, desirous of keeping up with their neighbors, anxious not to offend those same neighbors, willing to go along with the group in order to be part of the group. All the people in the village seem to be required to attend the outing on this particular day, and while the day evidently has importance to them as something special, it is not clear why that is until the final passages of the story.
The rationale for the lottery from the point of
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