'The Witch' | Shirley Jackson’s Hidden Masterpiece
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- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
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Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) was a master of twentieth-century American Gothic literature. Her novels and short stories are still widely read, studied, and adapted. If you’ve read Jackson, you’re probably familiar with her chilling 1948 short story, ‘The Lottery’. But is it the most unsettling story Jackson ever wrote? Might there be an even shorter, even more disturbing tale in her oeuvre? Watch on to find out.
Written, presented, and edited by Rosie Whitcombe
@books_ncats
Directed, produced, and edited by Matty Phillips
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Bibliography
Franklin, Ruth, '"The Lottery" Letters', www.newyorker....
Franklin, Ruth, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (New York: Liveright Publishing Co., 2016)
Heller, Zoë, 'The Haunted Mind of Shirley Jackson', www.newyorker....
Jackson, Shirley, 'Biography of a Story', Shirley Jackson: Novels & Stories (Library of America, 2010)
Jackson, Shirley, 'The Lottery', The Lottery and Other Stories (London: Penguin, 2009)
Jackson, Shirely, 'The Witch', The Lottery and Other Stories, (London: Penguin, 2009)
‘Witch-hunts in early modern Europe (circa 1450-1750)’, www.gendercide...
For me, I think my read of "The Witch" hinges on the exchange the boy has with the man when he first enters the train car, about how his dad smokes cigars too, and the old man says something like "all men smoke cigars; you will too one day." I've always interpreted "The Witch" as being about how casually and blatantly violent misogyny is passed down to boys from older men. Given that the violence is being done to a younger sister and the man and boy form a bond over rattling the mother, I've always felt like that's at least one of the undercurrents to the story. The gender reversal of the titular witch then calls to mind how men in power used accusations of witchcraft to keep women in line and distract from their own misdeeds.
I really like this interpretation, thank you - Rosie
This is just an insightful take on the story. TYSM for posting this.
That's my read too. It feels highly metaphorical. The boy is innocent, but already he has internalised some of society's misogyny by how he speaks about the witch. Then the old man comes, and his initiation is finalised, his innocence lost fully.
Right on the nail! Thanks for sharing
I agree, that's what I noticed too! The whole exchange between the older man and the boy is disturbing. The ease with which the old man draws everyone into his narrative is so spooky. It's like he used magic or hypnosis or some otherworldly means to manipulate them, and the effect is devastating. The little boy gleefully follows along, and the mother seems powerless to counteract it.
When I first read The Witch I was a young mother myself. It never occurred to me that the man might be telling a true story. He clearly heard the boy’s conversation and was echoing it which the boy recognized so he wasn’t frightened. But the mother’s world was turned upside down as he must have known it would be because the mother knew what the child didn’t-that adult men don’t talk like that to children. That, to me, was the horror-the mother’s realization of how easily evil can slip into a child’s life and her weapons are only those she uses where her only power lies which is what she uses for disciplining her child: the wagging finger and the lollipop reward. The boy was correct: he was a witch-a witch being someone who wishes evil on another which has real power of its own, the mother being the object, not the child.
This story terrified me more than all the others.
I enjoy this perspective, thank you
Joe Says: Undoubtedly the old man in the story was a United States Senator with a long and very notable career of influencing others behind him.
I was a young mother when I read it too, and was briefly mad at Shirley Jackson for writing it and scaring me so much. I had the same response to Stephen King for Pet Sematary and swore off his books for life. But with Shirley Jackson, I keep going back. She is the master.
@@catherinecrawford2289,
I still love Stephen King’s books. Pet Sematary didn’t disturb me as much as Misery. That was the first one that I hated.
I think Jackson’s most unsettling story is “ Louisa please come home”, where a missing woman returns to her parents in response to their annual radio broadcasts, but they don’t believe it’s her.
Oh yes that one is dreadful. Imposter Syndrome in a very real way!
Normality! Not "normalcy'.
@@ruthmeb i think you replied to the wrong comment, but just for the record, normalcy is a real word that means the same as normality.
@@ruthmeb, I think you replied to the wrong video. Is your “watch later” list on auto play? If you disable the auto play, it can’t roll over to the next video when you’re commenting.
At age 74, after a lifetime of being an avid reader, “The Lottery” still stands as the most horrifying piece of fiction I have ever encountered. I actually was introduced to the story in play form, performed by my junior high school drama club. It so disturbed me that I became physically ill and had to leave school. I had nightmares for months. In spite of this, I forced myself to read the story and its hold on my psyche even deepened. I truly believe that Shirley Jackson’s capturing of the human capability for being inhumane is one of the most chilling and brilliant written works of post-WWII literature. Thank you for your wonderful presentation.
The Haunting of Hill House had a similar effect on me. The original B&W movie and the book have caused me to experience "house" nightmares, or sometimes just rather bad dreams (almost worse because they aren kind of real-feeling) all my life. I saw "The Haunting" on TV back when I was 13, and I'm 69 years old now, Still having nightmares! I watched the newer TV series for about . . . . oh, 3 minutes? Scared me rigid.
your junior high put this on? damn. that's insane.
We did it as a school play as well. It's horrifying, I agree.
At 69 it’s true for me also after reading in jr. High..it affected me the same way…
@@margaret2713the difference is women volunteer for the abortion. No one’s forcing them. Their body their decision. It’s called free will given to us by God. I may not agree with it but thankfully I’m not a woman so I will never have to make that decision.
The most disturbing part of The Witch to me isn't the story itself, it's that it mirrors an experience I had when I was a lot younger. I was on the bus alone, carrying home groceries and a bottle of detergent that had a baby harp seal on the label. An older man came and sat beside me, striking up a fairly normal conversation, and after a couple minutes of chatting he says while pointing at the detergent, "Hey, do you know what they do with baby seals like that?" I say, "No, what?" He then began to describe in detail how baby seals are clubbed to death and skinned for their fur. I awkwardly cut him off, said goodbye, and got off the bus at the next stop.
The horror for me isn't in the hypothetical scenario of "wouldn't it be scary up if this happened" or thinking about what the story could have conceptually represented, it's that people like that are real and I met one.
I was about to write something similar! The horror for the story isn't necessarily its symbolism or open-ended interpretation, but that I had two vivid experiences with old men, as a child, which was disturbing as in the story. Vivid memories of them speaking to me, or "at" me about violence, and laughing when people were disturbed.
@Solonneysa I've had these experiences as well. Seems that perhaps a lot of us have... the manner with which and reason for speaking about such things, to children no less, is just sick.
A way of stripping away the innocence of children without having (or getting) to touch them. It's an act of power abuse that we are helpless to stop because the intended impact is only felt once it's too late to stop it.
Yes, I've met one too. We weren't children though, an adult mildly disabled daughter and elderly mother. He followed us round a shop talking disgusting violence like this until I yelled at him and the shopkeeper threw him out.
@ellebannana especially l y girls. And today we?see a swing back to that troll behaviour in the US from men toward women of all ages
I think The Witch is about how easy it was (and still is) for men to influence young boys and get them excited about violent misogyny as if it were a normal thing that just happens sometimes. The mother, being a traditional woman raised to expect that men would protect women and that women were meant to be timid and defenseless, is just that; timid, defenseless, and totally unsure what to do now that she’d witnessed her son being effortlessly indoctrinated into the folksy, traditional masculine pastime of fantasizing about violence against those too weak and timid and defenseless to stop them.
Her horror was one of unknown territory which she’d never imagined possible. She was raised like a sheltered prize winning pony to produce beautiful perfect children, and now an old man, an authority figure over all women and children, is joyfully teaching her joyful male child how to be a violent misogynist. Because that’s how masculinity was expressed; prizing and sheltering the women you approve of and like, and torturing and murdering the ones you deemed to be witches. It was normal! She was a nag, and only witches do that! There’s just something about her that makes me feel…angry!
And then male life goes on, joyfully, knowing that they will never be burnt at the stake for raising their voice or taking attention away from their sisters. They will be rewarded by male acceptance and terrified female offerings of lollipops in exchange for short term compliance with the most superficial rules of civility.
The mother’s horror is realizing what her innocent little baby boy is already on his way to becoming.
But the happy little boy with the second lollipop is reflecting on how much he admired the old man for being the _real_ witch. That is, a malevolent person who manipulates others and sows the seeds of evil thoughts into benevolent minds, but always invisibly. In ways that can’t be called criminal. Just stories. And then he gets up and moves on, still the same harmless, smiling old man.
I really like this interpretation, and very much see how much the story has to do with older men influencing younger boys to behave violently etc. Thanks for commenting - Rosie
“That is, a malevolent person who manipulates others and sows the seeds of evil thoughts into benevolent minds, but always invisibly. In ways that can't be called criminal. Just stories. And then he gets up and moves on, still the same harmless, smiling old man.”
Kind of like the writer of the story itself. Evil always masquerades itself as something desirable at first. It sells millions of books, and infects millions of minds… so who is the real witch???
You can turn children violent against anything
Yes!
This is an excellent analysis of that story, and imo spot on regarding the elements contained within.
However, real life isn't nearly so neat and cooperative with such vile creatures...
I was the firstborn, a girl, birthed and immediately burdened with the express task and purpose of fixing my viciously narcissistic, histrionic mother's 7-year marriage. When my birth instead prompted a temporary separation between my mother and my father, my "Mommie Dearest" turned on me and literally became my mortal enemy - in the most sly, deceitful ways possible.
5 years later, my younger brother was born, and he immediately became the "Golden Child", the favorite and darling of Mommie Dearest.
Meanwhile Mommie Dearest was deliberately sending me to live with her child-raping father, every summer vacation from when I was 6 years old on up. Incidentally he never touched his own child, Mommie Dearest. No, he saved his sickening attentions for Mommie Dearest's older half-sister, not related to him.
I was born looking like the far more attractive older half-sister, and I've often cattily surmised that the dreadful sexual predator wasn't at all attracted to Mommie Dearest, because she popped out with the absolute worst versions of his physical appearance - tiny near-sighted pig eyes, weak chin, snaggle teeth, big bulbous nose, pale pinkish sickly looking skin with an abundance of blemishes, and worse.
Mommie Dearest took sadistic delight in threatening me with being raped - by a "stranger" - whenever I was home during the school years, which means she was fully aware of her cruelty towards her own daughter, and covertly delighted in tormenting me.
BUT...!
It was my younger brother who was targeted for sexual violence by some boys at school!
Mommie Dearest's actions in dangling me as a tidbit for her rotting pestilent father backfired on her, because he never touched me! My grandmother was constantly around me, every summer that I had to spend on their ranch, and SHE protected me, possibly because she realized how badly she'd failed her oldest daughter.
But my brother... In addition with being threatened by some other boys at his school (I think he was around 10 - 11 years old at the time), Mommie Dearest latched onto him with a fearful ferocity! I'm not quite sure how she accomplished thoroughly isolating my brother, (although being raised in the elitist and extremely insular apocalyptic, fundamentalist Jehovah's Witnesses sect certainly helped, especially in light of their literalist and highly dysfunctional 'purity culture' mentality), but somehow she managed to keep him from ever even DATING anyone, let alone finding someone with whom to live his life independently from her.
I recently found her obituary online (since I'd completely cut myself off from that poisonous family many decades ago), and I see that my brother has been commenting on how much he still misses her, and how lost he is without her.
THIS is the hidden damage and enslavement to the supposedly docile and obedient females who support abusive patriarchal systems, that the foolish conservative male proponents of such systems are totally blind to. 😂
When you brought up the mother’s point of view, what do you say to your 4 year-old son, brought back a memory of a comment from a high school friend of mine. He said that his family had to be careful of his little brother who, after watching the Three Stooges a few times, had started reenacting various scenes. If you were sitting watching TV, he would come up behind you and try to knock you on the head with a hammer - just like Mo - and run off laughing. My horrible thought for the mom in the story, after the boy’s laughing at the man’s story, was can I trust my 4 year-old around the baby? I think part of the brilliance of Shirley Jackson’s abrupt endings is that it allows each person’s own terrible life events combined with their imagination to take her story to places more horrifying than what’s written on the page. Like the man in the story, Shirley Jackson plants a seed, then walks away chuckling. 😱
Hell yeah
the witch immediately jumps out to me as a representation of an interaction most women in my life have gone through. i’m a man but i’ve often been told by women close to me of experiences where they’re alone with men that they trust and yet suddenly a switch will flip. a joke will be taken to far, comments will keep being made, looks will be given. they aren’t safe anymore. among friends, lovers, family even and yet just for a moment they realise just how alone they are. i saw another comment talking about how they read the story as being about how men are easily groomed into violent misogyny and im glad im not the only one. even before the man shows up the boy is fantasising about brutally murdering a woman. did he see a witch that needed to be defeated or did he just see an innocent woman in the window? is there a difference to him? that’s why he moves on so quickly. it was just him and the man having fun. just boys being boys. but his mother spent those moments in terror. men often don’t even know nor care that they’re treating these women terribly. the old man was talking about his little sister with love and how he adored her and how beautiful she was and then he killed her. violently. under patriarchy men can see violence and subjugation as a normal or right way to treat those they love. the old man wasn’t a witch. the boy’s mother was, because she was there and the man was a man.
This is so interesting, thanks for sharing - this kind of interpretation seems to be something quite a few people in the comments share - Rosie
Was riding the train the other day and it occurred to me - was the little boy looking out the window, or at the reflection of mother in the glass?
@@unclevlad3357i love that theory
One of the things I find particularly striking in this story is way Jackson defines the genders. The mother is passive, ineffectual, unable even to protect her child from a stranger. The daughter is, significantly, a baby and helpless even to the point of falling over if not supervised every minute. The boy, on the other hand, is vibrant, assertive, curious. And the man, whose ranks the boy will one day join, when he's old enough to smoke cigars, takes complete control of the encounter, to the point of usurping the boy's loyalty for his mother. This is the way society still works, and it was even stronger back then, when there were no dissident voices protesting the social order.
Another point to consider is imagery of the witch. A witch is a fairy tale character, and unabridged fairy tales, with their wolves and ogres are actually very useful for childhood learning. From the safety of their beds, children can think about future encounters with dangerous people and decide what to do if they meet one. Have you ever heard a small child respond to a fairy tale like this? "If I ever meet that monster, I'll shoot him, BANG! And I'll cut him up in pieces!" Without foreknowledge of wickedness, an adult who grew up without scary stories is a sitting duck for the first opportunist who comes along. However, in this story, the boy isn't safely tucked up in bed, and the storyteller himself seems like a kind of wicked wolf. It's unlikely that he really did all those things to his sister - it's pretty hard for a kid to dismember a human body, for example, and where would he have found a caged bear to feed the head to? But I think his dual aim in telling this, is to remind the mother that she's helpless to oppose him, and to intrigue the boy with a glimpse into the realm of male dominance that is hi s birthright.
I actually wasn't shocked by the man's anecdote, because this, of course, is a Shirley Jackson story. As soon as he said "Shall I tell you what I did?" I was prepared for something outrageous, so I was a little confused at first when he spoke of rocking horses and lollipops. But that was soon put right when he went on from there, and I found myself back in familiar territory.
I don't think what the mother says sounds like she's addressing a child, necessarily. "What do you think you're doing?" seems like pretty commonplace response when you observe someone hurting something or someone you love. I might say something similar. But I do agree that the man talks to the boy mostly like another little boy, not an adult, which is telling, I think. I think that the story is about two things--the everyday violence with which we surround ourselves and our families (in fairy tales, cartoons, video games, movies, many books, and, in the real world, war and murder and guns, etc.) but the horror and shock we react with when it occurs or seems likely to occur in the real world nearby. Violence is for THEM, not us; it's in stories, not real. But of course, we know we live in a violent world. The story also subtly calls out a sexist subtext--the man joins forces with the male in the group (small as he is), while the jokes and stories all revolve around female victims--sisters and the mother.
Thanks for this, I enjoyed reading your interpretation, and totally agree about the sexist subtext - Rosie
I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this, but I think the last lollipop is important--when his mother gives it to him, she prompts him for thanks.
""What do you say?" she asked.
"Thank you," the little boy said. "Did that man really cut his little sister up in pieces?"
"He was just teasing," the mother said, and added urgently, "Just TEASING."
"Prob'ly," the little boy said."
The boys knows how to behave. She's taught him how to behave. He can still perform the duties of higher courtesy--when prompted. But there's been another element introduced, and it can't just be scrubbed clean. I think this is something anyone who feels a sense of responsibility to a child (I don't have children of my own yet, but I have younger siblings I would fight to protect) fears.
Theory: This story is horrendously unnerving because you get to watch a loss of innocence happening not by natural erosion and maturity but all at once, and in a public place, and right in front of a child's guardian, and I can't think of much more terrifying than that. It's so quick and stunning that it's almost...a wicked magic.
I think this point is really important - especially because the man generally seems well mannered, not agitated, and is described looking at the mother "courteously". The way he excuses himself as well - it makes me wonder what exactly the mother could even complain about to the conductor (another man). He was just teasing! No social rules have explicitly been breached.
"The Witch" is too much like reality for me. "The Lottery" is true in the fact that families stone their outcast relatives in other ways, leaving them to die on the street. Shirley Jackson was a realist. She wrote realism, not just gothic horror.
I agree, actually writing another Jackson video looking more at the domestic realism side of her writing - Rosie
And the unfortunate side effect of the expectation that the outcast deserves the ousting….we really aren’t that far away from species that check out fellow creatures status by sniffing a newcomer’s crotch. We can do better, so why don’t we?
Actually it was the US draft. Vietnam War was going on at the time.
@@CT-uv8osYou're more than a decade too early. "The Lottery" was published in 1948. But the horror of friends/family/neighbors turning on you without a second thought can be applied to a lot of real-life situations, then and now. That's partly why the story is a classic.
I love The Witch and am almost sure my deceased mother-in-law had read it as she took a real joy in telling people and especially children outrageous threats. The first time I read it all I could see was her face as the man. I think she too wanted to see how people would handle it, at my baby shower she didn't bring a gift and stated to my old mom and aunts that she always waits in case the baby is born dead, I had to hear about that for years and the most horrifting thing to the ladies is that she was a labor and delivery RN,
And maybe a sociopath, too.😮
Stranger danger is more of a real threat, than the reinforcement of tales that all Witches are evil mean old hags.
Of course I am biased, as I am a Crone now & still practice my Craft. I'm retired to a very rural, conservative Christian, community. I'm good with animal emergencies & difficult births. I hire local youth to help with chores on Saturdays; teaching safety, self worth, good communication, animal husbandry & foraging skills, while we work together. Every All Hallows Eve families are invited for Seasonal decor & a cauldron brimming with candies.
Not all Witches need to be feared.
Agreed! 🧙♀️- Rosie
I mean, working in L&D, she no doubt saw a number of babies born dead.
I kinda like her. Nurses generally have morbid senses of humour. The rather have to.
Popping in here late, but wanted to say that my read on The Lottery makes me think of how in our capitalistic society, there will always be a hierarchy and thus a needed sacrifice, usually being someone who is marginalized in some capacity (gender, race, class etc). Like the elders in the village, we are also told much of the time that “it was always like this” and “nothing but capitalism works.” All while we watch people die unhoused and without healthcare. It’s also interesting how the mother is the one to be sacrificed, and how gleeful the sons are to be spared over their mother. It very much feels like Jackson, who writes a lot about feminist issues (even if she didn’t identify as such at the time), wrote it to be the mother chosen for the lottery very pointedly, as it’s often the case that women are the scapegoats for the faults of society.
as a female horror author, Shirley has always been a huge inspiration. She was amazing!
I see it as a lesson as the benignity of evil. The sun is shining, children playing, etc. And yet,evil is there just under the surface.
Agreed! - Rosie
Shirley Jackson's writing amazes me. Seemingly effortlessly, she uneases using commonplace actions and things. She respected the intellect of her readers and allowed them to interpret as they saw fit. "The Witch" did surprise me, Indeed. I also find her family writing charming, a precursor to modern Mommy Blogs. I wish she lived longer. I would have enjoyed watching her writing evolve.
Yes I love her family stories too! Life among the Savages ❤
Yes, she is amazing at making the domestic unsettling. It would’ve been interesting to see what else she would have written. Thanks for watching - Rosie
When I first read the story I wondered if the old man was imaginary, representing the boy's inner thoughts and feelings about his sister. I wondered if his reflection in the window was the witch he saw. I wondered if the boy was having a conversation with himself out loud.
That's a cool idea
Mouse the cat reminds me so much of my cat, Kat. She was such a sweetheart. The only thing she ever wanted was to be with me and in my lap. I miss her so much, but I appreciate that I was able to have known her.
I appreciate your mention of historical context, and its importance to understanding the author's intent - in this case, 'The Lottery'. Shirley Jackson (one of my all-time favorite authors) wrote many excellent, and rather chilling short stories, examining the social, mental, and emotional lives of women in post-war America, using the Gothic convention. I also loved your observations on 'The Witch'. Jackson was so good at distilling what seems a simple scene, or series of action in the story, down to just a few pages, but which leaves the reader with a myriad of questions and interpretations. She actually wrote a very insightful essay on the crafting a short story, 'Notes For a Young Writer', in which she speaks to the use of 'economy' in writing, I think is included in a posthumous collection of stories and lectures, titled 'Come Along With Me'. Thank you for a very well-done piece, and I'm happy to subscribe. :)
Thanks very much, and thanks for the reading suggestions, will certainly check them out ❤️ - Rosie
Shirley Jackson is a classic! I vividly remember reading “The Lottery” for the first time and being captivated as a young teenager. Jackson was a genius, no question.
Everyone else has shared all the positivity regarding your content and analysis itself, so I’ll just chime in that the little set and background you’ve created is lovely and whimsical
Yeah, that's something I noticed, too. It's very charming compared to the typical garishness seen on other channels.
Normally I just hear these kind of videos but one glance of the folded papers hanging gave me ideas for my own room!
The story of the Lottery , upon a second reading, revealed that Jackson had foreshadowed to the reader what was about to happen. Some of the families needed the oldest son to draw the lottery, which meant the father was probably the winner in a previous drawing.
Wow. I had never thought of that. Chilling.
I didn't discover Shirley Jackson until I was in high school, so when I eagerly dived into her novel "The Bird's Nest" I thought "Oh, this is Jackson's very good fictional treatment of "The Three Faces of Eve" - the main difference being that Lizzie has four personalities, and Eve only three. BUT THEN years later I noticed an oddity - THE BIRD'S NEST was published in 1954, and THREE FACES not until 1957, so Jackson's story is actually the original here. (Of course THREE FACES was made into a very good movie with Joanne Woodward, while BIRD'S NEST was made into a much less well-known film called LIZZIE, with Eleanor Parker and a cameo by a very young and totally hot Johnny Mathis singing "It's Not for Me to Say.") But now I'll probably go to my grave wondering if EVE's authors plagiarized Jackson.
Thank you for sharing this.
The Three Faces of Eve was based on the case of Christine Costner, a famous real-life multiple personality, who had many more than three "faces". I'm not sure what Jackson's sources were for her story, but there were accounts of multiple personality out there. Christine Costner's case is fascinating, and complex and worth checking out, if you're interested. She wrote several memoirs, most of them more or less exploited by other people, including the psychiatrist who had been treating her (to little effect). Another cultural spin-off was the Siouxie and the Banshees single "Christine" - "the Strawberry Girl" and" Banana-Split Lady" were other alter egos of Costner.
we read the lottery in the 7th grade, and to this day, 5 years later, i simply have never forgotten it. it was just that deeply unsettling
I agree, very unsettling, Jackson is the master of discomfort. Thanks for watching - Rosie
Yes, I thought that was disturbing. I can't imagine reading this story in school!
Why the hell would a teacher introduce Shirley Jackson to 7th graders? High school seniors would be much more able to deal with her work.
I'm glad we read it in Grade 6 or 7. It made me pay attention to literature that was not just about dull people living dull lives.
We read The Lottery in 7th grade, too, along with several other short stories including The Scarlet Ibis and The Most Dangerous Game. I couldn't believe that assigned reading could be so much fun, even though The Scarlet Ibis left me crying.
As a gay kid watching the film in the 70s in school, I totally got that people you trust will turn on you. I got it.
Recently purchased this collection remembering "The Lottery" from high school English...and realized that I'd completely forgotten reading "The Witch" in the same class, and being just as shocked and unsettled by it then as now. It's a great little story. Both of them are frightening but for different reasons. I'd never picked up on the "motherly" tone of the mother scolding the man until now. I always read the story as a spooky look into how the same words or tone are received so differently depending on who shares them. The child shares his fairy tale story (to himself), and the man echoes the tone and words in his own story. As he keeps talking, it does seem unlikely that he actually did all those things...but we're still freaked out by it. It's not necessarily the content that's scary; it's the way he takes on a voice and role which is inappropriate in every sense of the word. Isn't it fascinating to realize that what frightens us is first "Did this guy murder his sister?" but then becomes "Who the hell says this kind of stuff to a CHILD, IN PUBLIC?" Presumably someone who is capable of much worse things. The child's response is fascinating too - while at first he responds positively to the man's attention, he appears to end the encounter by demonstrating a child's most profound and unsettling characteristic: absolutely withering insight. Love this gem.
The most frightening part of this story is the seed the okd man planted in the little boy, and how quickly it grew roots.
Thank you, I didn’t know about The Witch. In college I gave an oral presentation on Jackson, specifically about The Summer People. In preparation for that presentation I learned she said she was, in a way, proud The Lottery had been banned some places because this told her those people, at least, understood it.
An aspect of terror and horror in this story that I haven't seen people touch up on as much is the baby. The baby sister(s) in the story become one and the same to me. One cannot help but imagine the baby in front of the boy being the one that's being mangled and destroyed. This, added with how the baby is already hurt before in the story: when his brother goes to comfort her and she reacts positively, clearly trusting him. However, once the man sits down, she's only mentioned to show she falls sideways, yet again delicate as babies are and in danger. While we're focusing on the old man (who clearly is a threat to the boy), the boy and his mom, all I can think about looking back is WHERE IS THE BABY?! Not only in the subconscious idea of "Did this man grab her? Clearly he has a fantasy he's not afraid to speak out loud nor is he disgusted at of hurting young girls." But also, because she has bumped her head before. What if she falls? What if the strap suffocates her? The dismissal of the baby continues until the end of the story. The last time she's mentioned is mid conversation between the boy, the old man and the woman, as stated before. This means one cannot check-in on her, and even leaves place for the fantasy of the-old-man-as-witch, having kidnapped the baby as witches often do.
This story reminds me of a short story by Saki called "The Story-Teller". There's a similar setup, with several unruly children travelling on a train with their aunt, and a gentleman tells them a story about a good little girl who ends up being devoured by a wolf. It does have a payoff, though: the indignant aunt tells him off, and he replies that his story at least kept them quiet for 10 minutes, which was more than she could do.
I was reminded of that story too. Thanks for mentioning it. It's one of my favorite Saki stories.
I wish more people read Saki these days. I loved his stories when I read them.
How i can get the novel "Hangsaman" by shirley jackson? Please somone answer me♥️
Actually, I’ve just checked Amazon, and found it!@@rayenmellah8977
This is EXACTLY what I was thinking of!
The gentleman on the train is speaking to the little boy's ambivalence towards his baby sister. One might surmise that up until her arrival, he had been his mother's one and only. now She is taking up his mother's time and attention. What first born child has not, at one time or another, daydreamed of doing violence to the infant sibling.
An interesting interpretation, not one I’d thought of. Thanks for watching! - Rosie
I agree completely!!
Absolutely. The story speaks to the violent impulses we all have, but thankfully, most of us do not act on. (I speak as an oldest child with a good memory!) It is oddly reminiscent of Saki's much less terrifying, but also subtly unsettling, short story, "The Storyteller", in which a stranger on a train tells two children what seems at first to be a typically moralistic late Victorian tale about a very, very good little girl, but then she ends up getting eaten by a wolf. The children's governess is shocked, but the children love it.
The Lottery is Jackson's masterpiece. She takes the ancient notion of the scapegoat and joins its primitive roots in human sacrifice directly to an utterly believable modern setting. It is uncomfortable because it does not let us tell ourselves that we are too civilised, too modern, to do such things. Written the the McCarthy era, it is an equally disturbing read in the "Hang Mike Pence" Trump era.
I think both stories remind us that Shirley Jackson is discussing the ways that misogyny permeates society The first story, The Lottery is about women losing power once they become less attractive and less fertile. That the mother is outspoken is interesting. The 12 year old on the other hand is just starting that life cycle, and has more perceived value in society.
The second story The Witch has symbolically shown the narrative of fear about women’s wisdom with the boy exclaiming he just saw a witch. The baby has no power because it is not close to being fertile and is therefore devalued by society. Look at criminal convictions if a parent murders their child, the offense is not taken nearly as seriously as if they murdered an adult. I’m not sure how the mother fits in other than misogyny is being taught to her son and she has no power to control it nor contain it and it’s being taught to her son in a very immature language. What’s scary is that the man has embraced that hatred so young and is now imparting that doctrine on her son so young as well in a most heinous way.
I see the man’s response as “Oh, you want to talk about witches?” And then he lays the reality of adult life in the world on him and makes a joke of it to show that you cannot just freeze up because the world is horrific. The mother shows that she will protect her own by threatening the man. This highlights a difference between her and the strangers of the world. When the boy finally turns on the man after playing along, he is recognizing that the man is the monster for attacking his own. I believe the man really does represent the witch of aggregate humanity that will commit crimes that many of its members would never commit alone.
You spooked me when you touched a floating book and it began to sway. I thought it was a bookish design on the wallpaper
This story reminds me of the times where you hear people making really not okay jokes and statements, but you’re the only one in the room that thinks they’re not okay, so you just nod your head and chuckle halfheartedly
It may be that he's a witch but it's scarier if he's not. What if he is a normal person who out of spite and for amusement, because he is angry with the baby's annoying behaviors, decides to punish the mother. He contradicts the mothers social conditioning with lollipops and speaks to the little boy's fantasy imagination and ambivalence towards the baby. The adult and boy are similar but the man has received superficial social conditioning. Much scarier.
yea exactly
When I was a kid, I loved reading Shirley Jackson’s memoirs about her family: Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. If you prefer humor to horror, read these. She could write anything.
I read somewhere once that there are only two genres that can tell a story about family: comedy and horror.
Both stories remind me of the quote by Voltaire that "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
as a millennial my frame of reference for decontstruction of gender is the 90s anime Revolutionary Girl Utena, and i can't help but think of it with The Witch. In shirley jackson's story, the old man quickly brings the boy on "his" side, against his mother and sister, a microcosm of gender enforcement and misogyny. In the anime, a recurring theme is how every character is forced into gender roles, and how the titular character tries to navigate being "a girl who is a prince". in fact, an iconic line is "a girl who cannot become a princess is doomed to become a witch", and "in a way, all girls are Rose Brides, in the end". the show shows how all women are vulnerable to all men, just like this story pits a small boy against his adult mother.
"The Lottery" is not specifically about the evils of tradition such as sacrifice or witch trials. While those things are manifestations of what is at the heart of the story, they are specific sorts of crimes on their own. What happens in "The Lottery" is a more pure, nonspecific demonstration which plays out a terrible truth of human existence which is that while some may pretend that activities such as public executions are oh just terrible things aren't they, if one is announced, people will turn out to witness them in droves and really enjoy the spectacle.
The criticism in the story is directed both at the people who assemble because they can't wait to enjoy seeing someone else killed in a painful and dehumanizing way and also those who organize such spectacles -- which do not have to be big deals staged by royal pigs like Henry VIII who got a sexual thrill out of seeing the heads of his wives who could not please him sexually bloodily separated from their bodies, the sadism that people enjoy inflicting upon others, often consensually "as a group," which makes it OK, can be small-scale as well. Over and over you hear stories of girls in middle school who will gang up on one in their group that may be looked at as weaker or less attractive than others and throw her out of their little social gang with public humiliation or psychological assassination via social media.
The truth is that some people enjoy being part of a larger group that makes it OK by virtue of their numbers (or self-declared power) for them to psychologically and physically destroy a sometimes totally random person JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT, and possibly because they share the illusion that being able to do so makes them stronger.
The reason isn't necessarily important though or always the same. "Witches" can be created by a simple accusation as can be enemies of the state. It doesn't matter what the ostensible crime is supposed to have been. What matters is the power felt when the pain is inflicted upon the victim and the ability to be able to witness that. And if it is true that the victim in the display of blood and humiliation is NOT GUILTY of any serious crime, that just adds to the potential enjoyment in the situation as the victim pleading for his or her innocence and the knowledge that it will be in vain just makes their death screams that much more enjoyable.
What "The Lottery" says is absolutely terrifying because its message is that any group -- your church, your school, your government, even your family -- can just decide ARBITRARILY they want to make a spectacle out of your painful destruction at any time, if it wants to -- for any reason, even the slightest, for possible self-empowerment or JUST TO HAVE A BIT OF SADISTIC FUN at your expense, or possible loss of blood, mental health, or even life.
Anyone who has ever been targeted this way knows exactly how cruel other humans can be AND OFTEN ARE as they assemble in groups then choose their victims.
Humans are one of very few species on Earth that actually will kill each other just for the sake of killing. I think there may be some particularly vicious species of tiger that does this, I forget what they are but it's rare. There have also been some ancient species of human that would leave imperfectly-born babies out to die on hillsides but that's not exactly the same thing as what The Lottery is about. Which involves a victim who is not somehow "unfit" or necessarily culpable in any way, chosen by a group which may ostensibly have something to say that justifies that person's prolonged and horriific murder such as a promise of a good crop season to come, who the goal is to mentally destroy and kill painfully and enjoy the spectacle they have created and feel blameless about having helped make happen.
Torture porn movies seem to have run their cycle but they replaced public executions for a while. Now race-based and other selective murders seem to have replaced them and the direction of blame and murder-desire really escalated as reasons to justify random murders in the form of war as well seems to be on a sharp increase.
You can still watch a lot of public execution/"Lottery" type death stuff on RUclips as well; people are making video after video on such subjects, often on the topic of the deaths of cruel rulers, but still, the beheadings of Anne Boleyn and burnings at the stake and hangings of "witches" as well as nazi camp guards etc. are getting a LOT of views.
As I said though the really terrifying thing about "The Lottery" compared to other comparable tales is that the victim in the situation is selected ARBITRARILY and KNOWN to be innocent, not only does she know this herself, but everyone involved does, but they all continue to pick up stones.
That's the core of the story, right there. That even her little boy will throw one when given the opportunity.
Thanks for sharing this, I agree that the arbitrariness is terrifying. So much of Jackson’s writing has to do with innocent people (often women) being arbitrarily selected for some kind of cruelty - Rosie
The boy goes back to his seat, and looks out the window. "Prob'ly he was a witch."
...
The mother opened her mouth to say something, to point out that there were no such things as witches but, as the boy stared out the window and seemed to have given the encounter no further thought, she folded her hands in her lap and stared at the door to the compartment. She ran the words the old man had said through her mind over and over until finally she could sit still no longer and stood, walked to the door. She looked back at the boy.
"I'm going to get us something to drink," she said. "And...and maybe some snacks. Would you like that?"
The boy turned his face from the window and nodded.
"Then take care of your sister while I'm gone. I'll only be a minute, ok?"
The boy nodded again. And smiled.
I was recommended your channel after looking into more about Shirley Jackson and I'm so glad I found you! what a lovely insight into Shirley's writing and I love how you present your videos. I feel like I'm listening to my favourite English teacher x
Aw thank you so much, that’s lovely to hear 🥰 pleased that you enjoy our content - Rosie
I always thought the lottery was rigged. Mrs. Hutchinson knows she's been unpopular this year. She's pretty sure it's going to be her and that knowledge is where her "it's not fair" comes from.
Hmm interesting! - Rosie
It's an interesting thought, but I have to disagree. Mrs. Hutchinson showed up a little late to the proceedings because, as she explains in the story, she forgot what day it was, then remembered as soon as she noticed her children's absence. She was doing her dishes around that time, as she told her husband later, and wasn't going to leave until they were done, a detail that reveals that she's a person who likes things kept in order, which probably includes maintaining order in a community by respecting its rituals and traditions. Once her chore was done, though, as she told Mrs. Delacroix, she "came a-running" to the village square. She's just as invested in maintaining the ritual of the annual lottery and participating in it as all of the other villagers present. Until it gets personal, anyway. That's when she reveals her hypocrisy and the ugliest, cruelest, most self-serving part of human nature, crying out that the drawing that day - not the lottery itself - was unfair, then demanding that her married daughter Eva draw with the Hutchinson family to decrease the odds that she, Mrs. Hutchinson, will draw the paper with the black dot during the household drawing. We can assume she didn't scream about the unfairness of the lottery, or its results, in the years preceding the story, and she wouldn't have spoken up about the injustice of it all if a Delacroix or a Martin or a Jones had drawn the black dot, so there was no one to speak up for Tessie Hutchinson when the lottery finally came for her life.
I always felt the elders in the Lottery weren't very superstitious, they don't sound like fervent believers when they talk about the old sayings of the past, it sounds more nostalgic. I always felt it was more about strict, mindless adherence to the status quo. The sort of authoritarian mindset that's so prevalent in many places & that dismisses the complaints/ideas of (often) younger or more progressive groups.
I forgot that Shirley Jackson wrote “The Lottery”! Absolutely one of the best horror short stories ever, and made a deep impact on me, along with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
I didn't know that Shirley Jackson wrote the Lottery! I read it in middle school English class
Writing is my jam. Cats are my jam. Subscribed.
You had me at Mouse the cat! I love our feline companions but have always felt they lean notably toward the aloof and acerbic. Mouse would love the sardonic wit in their name!
My daughters once had a rabbit they named, for reasons unknown, “Puppy”.
Something that I took away was that the first time anyone loudly objected was Tessy, after she had been chosen. It reminds me of how some people can be so loudly pro-life/anti-choice, and then when they find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, they start making 'excuses' about how they should be the exception to the rules they want everyone else to follow.
oooooh for sure!
“Two old women” is the name of a book written by First Nation writer from Alaska. It’s about a “ lottery” type
Situation that more than likely took place at one time. Great little read.
I read Two Old Women many years ago. I have to disagree with the interpretation that it had anything to do with a 'lottery.' The Inuit tribe was in desperate times, and the tribal leaders required that they should leave behind the titular characters to fend for themselves in the wild because they were slowing down the rest of the group who were unable to feed and take care of them anymore. This happens even though they are all very ashamed of it. Ultimately the two women do fend for themselves very well, because they knew it was a life or death situation, and they had strong wills, and each other to depend upon. In the end, it was not a death sentence for the two women. I thought it was a very inspiring story about the resilience of the human spirit. Obviously the (very rare) practice of leaving the elderly behind when they were not useful to the tribe anymore did not always end so well, but it is important to point out there is a massive difference in the way victims are chosen in The Lottery. It is completely random and no characters feel shame or guilt whatsoever. There is ultimately no reason for it, except the underlying implication that the whole town are dark occultists.
The Lottery reminds me of the Aztec civilization that willingly went to death as sacrifice to the gods.
I rather think the slaves and captured warriors from competing tribes weren't so willing,.
Does anyone remember a short story about parents trying to hide their child’s deformity and the townspeople finding out and the child was thrown into a pond to drown? I remember this when I was in elementary school. It was horrifying to me because I have birth defects. The Lottery reminds me of this.
The movie The Haunting seen at 12, remains with me still. Newest version is great also. Incredibly scary.
Oh yes!!! Loved that film absolutely THE SCARIEST
That movie terrified me as a kid and I don’t use that word lightly.
@@CJG1419 I understand.
Don't ask for my interpretation. I'm here to be told what to think.
I tried reading Shirley Jackson's anthology of short stories when I was a teenager, got confused by "The Demon Lover" and gave up. When I saw this video posted, I went and dug out that book that I still had and began reading it again. I can appreciate the "domestic horror" so much more now. Jackson's horror is creeping and insidious and subtle. It's the slow build of unease that never gets released with a jump scare or a confrontation.
One thing that really caught my attention in "The Witch" that this video didn't mention was how the little boy seemed to be a little suspicious of the man from the first. When asked his age, he gave silly answers that couldn't possibly be true and when asked his name he says, "Mr. Jesus." (Absolutely fine and even praiseworthy, in my 21st century opinion.) Yet the mother corrects his answers and tells the man the boy's true age and name. She trusts this stranger right away and only later loses all trust. Meanwhile, the boy gets over his mistrust even shares some hilarity over frightening his mother. I think that's interesting but I don't know yet what to make of it.
Thanks for this! Did you take another run at 'The Daemon Lover'? - Rosie
@@books_ncatsI did, and it makes a lot more sense now!
Sorry, people wrote to Jackson to ask where they could go to WATCH THE LOTTERIES??
I'm not surprised that some people wanted to, I can't believe several people in *the 40s* were willing to blithely admit it in writing
It came to my mind, from. U.S. perspective, how willing people are willing to sacrifice mothers. In a post-Roe U.S. I’m dumbstruck by those who seem so willing to sacrifice a woman’s health &/or life to a fetus.
I love all things Shirley Jackson. Probably have read We Have Always Lived in the Castle six times. The Lottery too. Another brilliantly disturbing story is One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts. Also memorably chilling is the Daemon Lover. I love her autobiographical books, which are hilarious.
Thank you for covering The Witch. Jackson once again catches us in her web of ordinary life, only for the spider of fear to pounce. What I love is that the horrible man and his behavior COULD be any evil or malignant stranger’s, and the violence the little boy joins in could be rather typical, and the mother’s uncertainly as to how to respond seems normal-but the final line and title suggesting the man was a witch is truly chilling. It’s pulling the cover back a tiny bit to see a darker, scarier reality that we’re not sure we can believe in or trust. She was SO GOOD!
Thanks for sharing this, it really is a chilling ending. I looove We Have Always Lived in the Castle! And also writing something on The Daemon Lover - Rosie
I don't understand your interpretation of 'The Witch'. You are evaluating the story from the perspective of the Mother, but I think that we're supposed to view it from the perspective of the Boy. He is engaging in fantasy by saying things like that he's 28 years old and that his sister is 12-and-a-half, and the Old Man mirrors that behavior by acting like a child as well. I think the Old Man and the Little Boy are just bored, so they're describing a grotesque scenario to entertain themselves. The Old Man never hurt his little sister; The only person he hurt was the Mother by disturbing her when she is traveling alone with her two young children. If there is something disturbing here, it's about how men use the 'shock' of intersexual violence to get a response from women who are just trying to read their damn book. That act of cruelty is more real, than the imagined cruelty imagined by the Old Man to get a cheap laugh.
Shirley Jackson appears to have a basic grasp of day-to-day human nature, and therefore makes a good horror writer 🤷🏼♀️
Amazing video!!! I’m an Australian student about to graduate from uni with an English major and I particularly love Australian gothic esp in short story form, as I feel it really subverts the common tropes of European gothic. If you take requests at all, I’d love to see you cover Barbara Baynton’s ‘The Chosen Vessel’, which is my favourite short story of all time about a woman alone with her baby in the bush. Deeply unsettling! The Baynton Bush Studies anthology is brilliant and gives such an interesting insight into how frontier and then post colonial australian settler life acted upon European literary tropes. Slightly off topic but I also remember writing an essay Henry Lawson’s ‘The Bush Undertaker’ in my first year which is another iconic piece of australian frontier settler gothic. Some very interesting discussion to be had about how Indigineity is rendered in much Australian gothic (obviously in quite a racist and problematic way, but it is interesting that most of these older works have a sense of the inherent Aboriginal presence in the land and the way that Australian Aboriginal culture is intimately tied to and inherently found within the land), and I have also noticed that real estate is a big factor in some more modern Australian works which in a way reflects the older subversion of the kinda Poe-esque idea of the gothic house Victorian haunted mansion type thing into the corrugated iron shacks of settler Australian life. Yeepers sorry for the paragraph, but yeah you have earned a new sub and I reckon it would be so interesting to see you cover Australian gothic particularly from the settler era!
Oh wow, thanks for the recommendation! I know absolutely nothing about Australian Gothic but I’m fully intrigued now, I’ll check out the story - Rosie
I read “the lottery” in high school. The name of the character that got stoned didn’t stick in my memory so I forgot it.
Now it’s 20 years later, and I’m married, with a new last name.
Hutchinson.
I’m Mrs. Hutchinson. 😳
On the witch~ I see that his desire to shock her, a bit voyeuristic, but worse. True voyeurs love to shock the innocent. I do think its a comment on misogyny. The elderly man is indeed the witch.
I think the lottery could be read as commentary on the cold indifference of most people towards people who simply drew a bad lott in life. Whether they were unlucky with money or health or whatever other tragedy befalls them, most people don't care even if it is in their power to help. "Not my problem" mentality is brutal. Perhaps stoning the winner to death is akin to the immorality of inaction and not doing what is in your power to help.
One of the reasons people did not comprehend The Lottery is that, in 1948, speculative fiction had been ghettoized in the pulps for thirty years. Most people, especially of lit rags like The New Yorker, simply did not know how to read it. It's a learned skill when the whole background isn't spoonfed to the reader, and Jackson writes too well for that. It's not like the old days when specfi could turn up in Godey's Ladies' Book.
Maybe the seemingly nice old man was the very same witch. Witches were said to be shapeshifters you know.
This is an excellent essay, but I just couldn't complete it, you enticed me to buy a copy of the Witch, so I had to stop listening.
The more you read and know Shirley Jackson and know the amount of Rx medication she used. The days women used pep pills and sleeping pills and that she was sleep deprived for years, cage left may unfinished stories. This sounds like one she finished laughing out loud at the delicious absurdity.
She left so many unfinished manuscripts her daughter is finishing them and they are being released slowly.
How do you like those?
I’ve yet to read them, but will add them to my ever-growing list! Thanks - Rosie
Well this struck a primal fear i didn't know I had. Thank you.
Honestly tho, I think the whole moral of this story is simply that....men can be preditorial and most of the time we're completely unable to stop them. I think at it's heart it's an examination of how violence against women is normalised from one generation to another. Preditors spread their ideology like a virus and most of the time all it takes is a joking word to pass it onto the next generation. Cause it's all fun and games, right? It's just a story.
Until it's not.
This is really interesting, thanks for sharing your interpretation. Sorry for instilling a new primal fear! - Rosie
The man's blue suit and his behavior could be said to link him to Shirley Jackson's James Harris stories: "The Daemon Lover," "The Tooth," "The Village," etc. Have you read any of those, and if so do you have any thoughts?
I’m working on something in that area as we speak… - Rosie
This is one of my favorite stories. 6th grade was never the same after my honor’s English discussion about this story. We had a reading specialist who loved hearing out ideas.
We dissected the story about its commentary on the society. We discussed how there is an naïve element about the community. It’s not brutal to them because the lottery is based on chance. The oresence of the old men is an illustration. We thought it served as a kind of justice system. Like the “Hunger games”.
We (6th graders) thought she was stoned to death.
I’m 39 and I still think about this
It seems to be the kind of story that really sticks with a person after they read it. I agree, to the community it’s just another part of life that’s based on chance, so not brutal. That’s interesting about it being a kind of justice system - do you mind elaborating on that?
Thanks so much for watching and for your comment! - Rosie
@@books_ncats Jesus Christ is God and Lord of all creation. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
Are you a bot? @@sleepyjoe4359
@@sleepyjoe4359 off subject.
@@jamesholland8057 King of Kings and Lord of Lord. God and Lord of all creation. The Name of the Most High, Jesus Christ, before Whom all powers of the enemy are rendered void. ✝️
I don't think Jackson wrote anything that didn't terrify me. Even "Charles," a seemingly lighthearted story about a bad boy in a son's class, turns dark when you think about the implications....
I thought about "Charles", too, and feel the same way. The last line of the story is a slam dunk.
same !!! we read that story in 8th grade and it was such a gut punch ending😭
I actually commented this first on a later video of yours - When I was in 6th grade, they showed us "The Lottery", I love horror, but I have never been the same.
However, I also found it to be a karmic tale, because one of the strongest proponents of the Lottery, before the results were known and there was little danger, instantly did a 180 when she became the victim of her own belief.
First video I’ve watched of yours.
Mouse the cat is so precious…I think I like it here lol
When I said out loud "What the fuck." during the narrative of The Witch. Then, you said what the fuck. And I got even more spooked.
FYI, We Have Always Lived in the Castle also has a Netflix adaptation
I vividly remember reading “The Demon Lover” (I believe that’s what it was called) and being shocked by the ending of it. It’s nowhere near as shocking as the last story mentioned, but I remember that similar awkward feeling at the end. Shirley Jackson is a wonder!
I didn't realize how much history I needed to know as a reader until I took my first English class in college. The context and history of the time is almost a character in some of the better prose we read. I've really enjoyed your vlog. It's been a fascinating study of the gothic.
I read The Witch for the first time today. Some of the other stories haven't really impressed me (The Villager) and I was sleepily reading. I got to the Witch and GASPED. This one really puts you on your ear.
I love her short stories and am onto the novels now.
And i have to say, I almost forgot about this one. I have these kinds of weird situations with random strangers in my old hometown. I don’t find it that shocking; just very revealing...
Thank you for this! 🧙🏾♀️
You’re very welcome! - Rosie
The "horror" that Jackson reveals in many of her works is amplified by the ordinariness of its setting. Both "The Lottery" and "The Witch" exemplify it. It was a rather perverse reaction, I believe, to her early publications about her children and family life, where she turned the drudgery and frustrations of the "housewife" into something charming, cutesy, and meaningful. In "The Witch", she reveals that even "innocent" children aren't quite what they purport to be. Stephen King, later on, learned from Jackson that lesson and its why he often uses children as being capable of evil or being used by evil. I think its fascinating, as well, to look at the sixties television sitcom "Bewitched" as an attempt to sanitize the supernatural and yet, it still used the character of "Tabitha" as a reminder that a 'witch" could be the baby in the carriage in the park.
Omgoodness I'm nervous to read through more than the first 4-5 comments below. After all, being the disastrously immature, ADHD-diagnosed (post?) middle-age adultchild I am, 'The Witch' screams to me of... mirth. Yes, childish, childhood, in-everyone's-face, silliness. The old man jumped in playing with the boy, not in an insidious way, but a conspiratorial deep-end young boy fashion. The boy recognized it immediately. The author, having the man duplicate tone and timbre of the boy's initial conversation which he would have overheard gives this away. Again, it's so simply innocuous (to me, at least) - the man joins the little boy in playing, offering war with toy soldiers. Or a GI Joe battle. Or model planes bombing ten countries at once. Games. Just gruesome, horrific, normal boy-child games.
Of course in our reader-heads we may speculate 'what if?'. What if the old man did it all? What if part is true? What if he's (in the parlance of our time) grooming... blah blah blah nauseam blah blah. We are the ones inventing bullshit in our heads. The old little boy and his new little little boy buddy are having a grand time. They're climbing trees with far too many readers- along with mom- terrified they'll fall out.
'The Lottery', on the other hand. Yeesh.
I'm inclined to agree with you about "The Witch". The old man was being playful; naughty and mischievous... and maybe being a bit of a sh*t-stirrer, like the story-teller in Saki's story who spins a highly 'improper' story for a mob of unruly little kids in a train carriage. It's a reverse-Aesop's fable, wherein a *dreadfully* good little girl, with rows of 'good conduct' medals on her jacket, gets found and eaten by a wolf who hears her medals clinking together.
The Lottery and Other Stories is one of the greatest collections of short stories ever published! It’s up there with some of the short-story collections by Ray Bradbury, Richard Mathewson, and Stephen King.
I forget the title, but she wrote a really beautiful book about a girl who goes to college and has a psychotic break. It plays on the whole Gothic Trope of "is this insanity or is this happening" but it really gets dire and frightening.
Oh if you ever remember the title please share. I'd love to read it!
Are you maybe thinking of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar?
Are you talking about The Hangsaman?
Ooh I don’t know that one - please do share if you remember! - Rosie
Hangsaman is my absolute favorite by her.
There's a certain horror in looking back at one's childhood and realizing how much hate and violence got normalized by older generations. Luckly for me, it was never directed towards women, but it was directed towards things like Cats. Before I adopted my first cat, I had this idea of cats as cold and mean creatures that I was supposed to hate because that's how I've been raised. Perhaps it's a little silly, but it was still normalizing hate to a very young mind.
The Lottery makes me think of Christians (and other theists) who go on about the concept of "Hell" .. the idea that countless numbers of people, including potentially friends and family of theirs, are supposedly going to suffer for ETERNITY in some bizarre metaphysical torture realm, simply for not believing in the same "God" as them.
It always amazes me they can do this without any self-reflection or even above all, basic compassion or humanity.
Those who can make you believe absurdities ..
I was going to say something similar, it's an allegory for heaven. but you bring up a good point not just your friends and family but others around you. Now I think of the US and how selfish some are compared to European countries. Europeans have a problem with watching others suffer while Americans gleefully point out flaws and bad decisions, all the while clueless just how easily one can loose everything with the draw of a hat.
beautifully put
The great thing about open-ended horror is the many interpretations. I'm obviously living in the world now and having grown up with the "basic and semi-unspoken women's rules" such as: can't go out alone at night, bathroom in groups, carry a self defense item, have your phone out with 91- dialed already, don't leave your drink alone, etc. perhaps I interpret it differently than when it was written. Then again perhaps I don't. I see it as this: a random man approaches you. You are in semi-public so it might be ok. You are juggling a lot so your guard is down for a moment. And then low and behold: he is one of the men you never wanted to meet and oh sh*t you weren't prepared. Having kids would add to this feeling a lot; I don't have kids. But then, and I guarantee most women will understand this mass of feeling: how do I suddenly appear assertive and powerful and like someone you don't want to mess with so he'll leave me alone WHILE ALSO actively not making him mad because if I make him mad I might set him off and he might attack me (or the children) WHILE ALSO determining what "threats" might deter him (I'll call the conductor, etc) WHILE ALSO teetering on if the threats themselves will set him off WHILE ALSO trying to figure out how realistic the threats/help I am seeking might be before harm is done and/or I get kidnapped, murderer, etc. WHILE ALSO trying to determine if, when or if the help I seek comes how long will I be able to hold off or fight against this person realistically and can I make it until then (or, fight them off of hurting/taking the children in this case). AND ON AND ON AND ON. So in The Witch when I read it of course I had concern for the kid. But it was a very strong modern reaction of 'oh f*ck that one wrong one finally found me.' Because you can encounter 100,000 guys who are just fine. But then: you can encounter the ONE that is not. And most of the time you truly don't know which is Witch just by looking.
A voracious reader, I read the Lottery when working as a page in the local library. It became a part of the underpinnings of my life-view, though not consciously, when the awakening of the civil rights movement suddenly made the connection.
Her short story, The Lottery haunts me still after 50 years! I think of it after mass shootings in our country that claims a very thirsty tree of liberty.
Jackson hit a nerve!!
Having ridden public transportation and had experiences like this, I can't help but wonder if the Witch was based on a real experience of Shirly Jackson's.
Ultimately the lottery goes beyond a criticism of tradition to a criticism of irrationalism. Take for example what is said in this video about Communism relying on neighbor turning against neighbor. I've studied the history of actually existing socialist states, Marxism, and have had enough conversations with liberals to know no amount of scholarly research published especially after the end of the Cold War can change their minds on how these societies actually work. The real basis of public approval of a Communist Party is whether or not they are improving the standard of living for their people, and they typically are. This is why despite official changes in Soviet policy towards Stalin, the people who lived during his administration still widely regarded him as a great leader. Less than 1% of the population were affected by the purged, which came after widespread and highly publicized terrorist attacks and industrial sabotage credibly linked to hostile foreign powers by way of disgruntled political factions, and by this time, the first 5 year plan had paid off significantly for the average Soviet citizen, who saw all the hardships they endured since 1905 and 1917 as finally paying off. 60% of the Communist Party were industrial workers (the highest number they would ever achieve), Stalin was a common man from a common background, and much of the abuses didn't come from on top but local corrupt leaders who usually got what was coming to them courtesy of the central government, making them appear even more like the guardians of the commom people's interests. Stalin normalized relations with the Orthodox Church, tried to make peace with foreign powers, and on and on.
The usually response to this, regardless of any evidence presented, is just outright dismissal. It doesn't matter if it's factually true, it is politically incorrect, even equated to Holocaust apologia, even if you then go on to prove there was never any state plan ever in the USSR to commit genocide, and then point to the Nazi newspapers, fascist sympathizers, and right wing nationalist movements to prove who created these conspiracies as the ultimate origin of them, meaning these conspiracies are actually a part of a real Holocaust justification scheme, just not one committed by the USSR (or China, lately). These proofs are also rejected by liberals, even when they come from apolitical Western academics freed from Cold War constraints to pursue their research wherever it takes them. The appearance of taking an unfashionable position is worse than taking a position that's not only wrong, but is rehabilitated Nazi propaganda with the most obvious anti Semitic serial numbers filed off.
The attitude of Western liberals is basically the same "white man's burden" style thinking their great grandparents had, where all these ignorant savages living on the periphery of empire just need a good old fashioned occupation and reeducation to get their minds right. Everyone is brainwashed except them. Everyone is a crude, ideological, superstitious barbarian trying to force some unrealizable goal onto humanity in conflict with basic human nature, except them, no matter how bad the suicide epidemics and mass surveillance and centralized control over mass media becomes as fascism begins to reimpose itself slowly over the West right in front of everyone's eyes. Somehow only the barbarians on the frontier can see this, while the cosmopolitans fete themselves in blissful ignorant decadence in their citadels of bone.
i interpreted the ending of The Witch in a slightly more hopeful way, but at the same time pretty disheartening. The boy states very clearly near the beginning of the story that he thinks witches are "bad" and "mean", and despite seeming to get along with the old man, he tells his mother that he thinks the man was a witch only after the man leaves.
have you ever had a conversation with a friend or a group of people, and someone says something that makes you uncomfortable, but instead of speaking up you sort of humor the person talking and try to play along until they're done with this uncomfortable topic? That's what I think is happening to the boy here. he plays along with the man during his violent rant, but only after the man leaves does the boy feel comfortable enough to confide in his parent, his mom, and ask her whether the story was real, and then say that he thinks the man was a "bad old mean" witch.
Male friend groups (in my experience at least) tend to encourage each other to do stupid or reckless things and have vulgar conversations with each other. i've been in these situations, and instead of doing what i know is right and exiting the situation, i get swept up in it all and play along, only realizing after the fact how horrible it all was. and i think The Witch is about the boy being "programmed" to follow that societal norm, to outwardly accept the violence present in a lot of male culture while only expressing his true feelings once he is alone with his mother and little sister, i.e. women who are not expected to feed into violence. the boy unwittingly pigeonholes his mother and sister in that way as well.
the boy at least trusts his mother enough to tell her how he really felt about the man, but the interaction still happened, and the boy still fed into it, and it still deeply disturbed his mother. it raises the question of how he's going to behave once he's grown up, even if "deep down" he doesn't approve of it entirely.
One thing I would say, as someone who teaches about culture, including things auch as the socially constructed nature of sex and sexuality- the message of the lottery, of the value of picking out an "other" to enact violence against as a means of creating social cohesion, is sadly still relevant to American society, where members of the LGBTQ community- especially the transgender community- are under attack
This reminds me the Burning Man and as unsettling as The Twilight Zone’s S3E8 “It’s A Good Life”, based on a short story by Jerome Bixby where Billy Mumy plays a child/monster with supernatural powers. Perhaps it was used as a reference in The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon tried to blink Leonard out of existence using his mind. Idk. The Lottery is rooted in pagan ritual, much like the Mayans sacrifice of countless people because of the eclipse, in Mel Gibson’s movie, Apocalypto”. Often in lotteries, it was considered an honor by the person, their family and the citizens; the person was treated royally until the day of the ritual event. The Mockingbird series of books and movies is a retelling of same, but with numerous sacrificial deaths by murder until one stands victorious.
There is something in the unwavering loyalty to ritual in ‘The Lottery’ that I felt in my first reading of it in high school that has always intuitively linked it to the grim bloodletting of Innsmouth and the mythos of Lovecraft. I do not believe there is any real world connection between Jackson and ol’ HP, but in my head, there is a subtext of uncanny, warped community hysteria that exists in both.
I am totally incapable to analyze a story like the Witch. I've read that story in her book Come Along with Me. I didn't have a clue what it meant or if it meant anything. Thank you so much for you insight and intellect. Being able to read doesn't mean insight.
Ah thank you, that’s nice of you to say ☺️ - Rosie
A Shirley Jackson story that really stuck with me was "The Possibility of Evil" I think what struck me about it is that it presents you with an objectively unlikable person, but at the end of the story when she finally get what's coming to her, it doesn't feel cool, it feels... weirdly twisted. (spoilers) all that happens is that her beloved rose garden gets destroyed, but it's written in such a way that it feels like you just witnessed a death, like they had killed her baby or something instead of just a bunch of flowers. Even if they are just flowers and even if she was an awful judgmental person, the end is just written with such a fill-in-the-blanks finality that you feel like it ends in an execution, and socially speaking, it kind of does.
Yeah honestly what I remember from Shirley jackson
@limelatern5637 I agree completely. “The Possibility of Evil” has a seething and sinister nature to it. What I found most disturbing is that no one suspected the seemingly pleasant old woman to be spreading malicious and pointed gossip until near the end of the story.
I think that while it was totally not okay for the old man to say those things to the boy, it’s unlikely to me that the boy would internalize it to such a degree that he'd hurt his sister in the same violent way. I think that when the boy asked if the man really did kill his sister, it shows that he understands that the old man was just fantasizing as the boy was, telling a random violent story based on the environment. (The boy uses the outside of the train as inspiration, the old man uses the boy having a little sister as inspiration) At the very least, he doesn’t immediately take it as absolute truth.
I think that is why the boy wasn't bothered by it and found it funny. To him, it probably seemed as outrageous as his story about there being a witch outside, something he made up entirely. His mom getting frightened by it then would seem funny because he knows it’s only a story, and he keeps up the joking fantasizing by saying she'll cut his head off. I don’t think that was him scolding the old man, he was again using the environment (his mom scolding the man) and being inspired by the man's story of cutting his sister's head off, adding to their story.
And it wouldn’t seem strange to me if the child wasn’t bothered by it even if he thought the man was telling a real account. Children are naturally drawn to morbid topics because it’s something that adults keep away from them, so they are curious about such things, and the don’t understand the magnitude of things like harm and death yet. I think the way the boy acted in this story was very realistic, especially if he was very young.
I do think it does have subtext about misogyny, though. And I think that really, it would have been way more harmful if the man had been much more serious about it. But on the other hand, adding to a child's story that way is an easy way to put ideas in the child's head without them even knowing it.
I think that what makes his statements so harmful is that the boy will continue to be indoctrinated into misogyny for the rest of his life. This one isolated incident of a stranger telling a very morbid story to him would probably just stay a story, except for the fact that this casual violence towards women will be drilled into his head as he grows up. When he grows up, he might look back on that memory and be horrified at the man being so casual about something so awful, or he may see it as a normal event that shows how common these casual statements about women are, how it’s just part of being a man, and his mother didn’t understand because she's a woman. Or, he could just think about it and think, what a weird man, ha ha. That was strange.
And I think about how witches are widely seen as preying on children most of all, because . . . Er, well, most bogeyman stories of witches just kind of state that they like to eat children most of all for no reason, but when you put that in the allegory of witches being adults who trick children and prey on their naivety, it makes sense that witches would target children because children are easy to fool.
The old man is like a witch because he so easily joins into the little boy's magical thinking. Not only is the fantasy like magic, treating what is unreal as something real (the way the boy states he saw a witch even though he didn’t, the old man says he did something that seems unreal in how inconsistent and sudden and unrealistic-a million lollipops-it was), but it’s also like magic, how he can so easily captivate the boy, and get the boy to repeat an idea after him (my mom will cut your head off).
So, the magic of being a witch, and the evil of the witch is multifaceted. The magic of fantasy, the magic of quickly getting the boy to join in, and the evil of putting someone under your spell, putting thoughts in their head, and the utter violence that witches are supposed to inflict.
We read “the lottery” in my high school English class,in the 11 th grade,in 1978.
You do learn why they have it. They spoke about the corn.They have the lottery in June,corn will be soon… It’s just something the village has always done. The yearly tradition, may have been all the way back to when they were all Pagans. They’re talking about the north village stopping it. The villages think they’re crazy to think about that.
We did a lottery in the class. Our English teacher passes a basket out among the class. Everyone took a piece of folded paper,about 25 of us. And I was the one with the spot! I got pelted with the pieces of paper. I was happy there was no gum!
Both stories sound really interesting, but my first reaction to the talk from "The Witch" is - "just another day in customer service", cause weird talks happen a lot with that job