26.
Write a note on the friendship between Vikram and the author of the story "The Lottery".
Answers
Explanation:
First published in The New Yorker on June 26, 1948, “The Lottery” is considered one of the most haunting and shocking short stories of modern American fiction and is one of the most frequently anthologized. The story takes place on a June morning in the town square of a small village. Amidst laughter and gossip, families draw slips of paper from a ballot box until housewife Tessie Hutchinson receives a slip with a black mark on it. The villagers then stone her to death as a ritual sacrifice despite her protests about the unfairness of the drawing. The impact of this unexpected ending is intensified by Shirley Jackson’s detached narrative style, the civility with which the cruelty is carried out by the villagers, and the serene setting in which the story takes place. After publishing the story, The New Yorker received hundreds of letters and telephone calls from readers expressing disgust, consternation, and curiosity, and Jackson herself received letters concerning “The Lottery” until the time of beath. Most critics view the story as a modern-day parable or fable which addresses a variety of themes, including the dark side of human nature, the subjugation of women, the danger of ritualized behavior, and the potential for cruelty when the individual submits to the tyranny of the status quo.
Author Biography
Born December 14, 1919, into an affluent family in San Francisco, California, Jackson wanted to be a writer from an early age. She wrote poetry and kept journals throughout her childhood, and these writings have revealed her interest in the supernatural and superstition. When she was fourteen, Jackson’s family moved from California to New York, and in 1935 Jackson began college at the University of Rochester but withdrew for a year to teach herself to write. She tried to write at least a thousand words a day and established a disciplined writing routine she kept for the rest of her life. Jackson completed her bachelor of arts degree at Syracuse University in 1940. As a student, Jackson regularly published fiction and nonfiction in campus magazines. Additionally, her editorials denounced prejudice at Syracuse, particularly against Jews and blacks.
Shortly after graduation, Jackson shocked her Protestant family by marrying Stanley Edgar Hyman, a left-wing Jew and fellow student from Syracuse University who later became an eminent literary critic. Living in New York City, Jackson worked briefly as a clerical worker and continued to publish short fiction regularly. In 1945 the couple moved to the village of North Bennington in Vermont, where Jackson lived for the rest of her writing career. It is in North Bennington where she wrote “The Lottery,” and Jackson has admitted that the village served as a model for the setting of the story. The diversity of Jackson’s popular stories in such periodicals as The New Yorker, Good Housekeeping, The Hudson Review, Woman’s Day, and The Yale Review thwarted the efforts of most critics to neatly categorize her work. Jackson joined the teaching staff at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in 1964; she won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1961 and the Syracuse University Arents Pioneer Medal for Outstanding Achievement in 1965. Jackson died of heart failure on August 8, 1965.