Shirley Jackson and The Lottery
The human society is a phenomenon to watch, study, and understand. From a structural-functionalist view, one can argue that the society is made up of different ‘organ-like’ institutions, which each, made up of even smaller functional units that work together, interrelate and correspond to realize different community goals (Jackson 20). In relation to this, society is usually divided into major and minor institutions that govern it. These institutions, like law and education, for example, ensure smooth and balanced learning, working, and living environment for all. In this paper, thus, we will try to look into human society in order to establish the structural layout of the community with close reference to a one Robert Scholes view of cultural conditioning and with the work of Shirly Jackson, The Lottery, as our case study.
Robert Scholes (1929-2016), well known for his ideologies pertaining to metafiction and fabulation, was a celebrated American literary theorist and critic (Jackson 24). In his famous work On Reading a Video Text, he delved deep into the power of media, namely, how commercials held on television can dictate a certain degree of power over the viewer on a subconscious level. In this particular text, Scholes used words such as cultural reinforcement and visual fascination, which will form the basis of each of our arguments (Jackson 26). Giving explanations to these words, which we will also do, he moved further ahead to give them required contexts in order for us to fully understand them. With Shirley Jackson’s On Reading a Video Text in mind, this paper’s main agenda then is to dissect the community presented to us in this short story with a bid to understand the concepts of community and conformity as put forward by Shirly Jackson.