The idea of a planned and deliberate retribution at the heart of Shirley Jacksons The Lottery reflects to some degree the vengeful ideology that inspired the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts. Jackson took immense inspiration from tales of the macabre in an otherwise seemingly mundane societyshe wrote, for instance, of seeking out the news articles depicting something horrendous like an ax murder for the sake of reviving her spirits after so many life-affirming stories about babies: The lead article on the womans page was about how to adjust the older child to the new baby. I finally found an account of an ax murder on page seventeen, and held my coffee cup up to my face to see if the steam might revive me (Jackson, Magic, 518-19). Though critics of The Lottery have seen it as a startlingly refreshing tale, Nebeker has observed that beneath the praise of these critics frequently runs a current of uneasiness (100). That uneasiness has to do with the fact that Jackson r
eflects in the narrative an irrational yet malicious evil that is used by the townspeople to purge themselves of their bile by venting their spleen on the poor winner of the lotterywho, in the story, is Mrs. Hutchinsona willing participant in the lottery so long as she was never on the losing end of it. Now staring down the rock-hurling firing squad she is like the poor girls persecuted during the Salem Witch Trials, which were as much about placing blame for some guilt arising out of the Puritanical social consciousness of New England: the judges landed the blame on the girls accused of witchery and their lives were forfeited. The motive of the townspeople in Jacksons story is never revealed outside the fact that it is a tradition, which makes it all the more unnerving: the society in The Lottery is engaging in a malicious and violent event literally without any reason givenas though there were something evil in human nature that the people were simply giving voice to.