May the day of your death be sunny: Uma investigação materialista da sociedade no conto “The Lottery” (2005 [1948]) de Shirley Jackson

Abstract

In 1948, a short story written by Shirley Jackson narrates the existence of a small town that holds an annual lottery to decide who will be the next person to be stoned to death. “The Lottery” (2005 [1948]) shocked and surprised its readers and became a classic of the high school curriculum in the United States, written in an era of change and hope. When we look closely, however, we discover that in parallel with its story, the short story portrays a society that is more complex than it appears at first glance. Taking that into consideration, Cultural Studies allows us to analyze literary works considering their relationship with the world and its cultural practices, while cultural materialism teaches us that literary works are part of the cultural aspects of a society, and these cannot be isolated from the world, being altered and transformed by the socio-historical conditions in which they are inserted. For this reason, we used these theoretical fields to answer the following question: what are the relationships between culture, society, and tradition in the short story “The Lottery” (2005 [1948]), by Shirley Jackson, from a critical materialist perspective? To offer an answer, the following general objective was established: to investigate the relationships between culture, society, and tradition in the short story “The Lottery” (2005 [1948]) by Shirley Jackson from a critical materialist perspective. The following specific objectives were also established: (i) to discuss the theoretical assumptions of Cultural Studies and materialist criticism, with special attention to the concepts of culture and tradition; (ii) to verify how culture, through tradition, influences societal values in the short story “The Lottery” (2005 [1948]) and what the consequences of these relationships are. To achieve these objectives, a bibliographical investigation was carried out, with a qualitative, exploratory approach, based, among others, on the studies of Raymond Williams (2011), Maria Elisa Cevasco (2003), and Jonathan Culler (2011). All things considered, the research findings reveal that society reproduces the lottery as a tradition and transforms it into a cultural aspect, and it is used as a tool to promote unity and control. The relationships between the people demonstrate differences in power that aim at the predominance of the dominant culture, and the consequences of the acts carried out by these individuals result in a trivialization of violence. Therefore, they demonstrate how they want to measure the material conditions above humanist values, as the characters show no remorse when killing a person from their community and use human sacrifices to maintain these conditions.