POST #50.......and counting
When you were in middle school or high school, you probably read Shirley Jackson's highly anthologized short story, "The Lottery." It is a literary rite of passage for American teens. I can remember being traumatized by it when I first read it at thirteen. For those of you who never read it (or who cannot remember it), here is a short synopsis:
The story opens as members of a small town in an undisclosed location (picture Any Town, USA) are gathering for the annual lottery. The children are innocently collecting and piling up stones, the men are chatting together as are the women. Then as the time for the actual lottery draws near, the fathers and mothers gather their children and stand together in family groupings. As the lottery begins, it becomes apparent to the reader that the participants want to lose rather than "win" this lottery. The family patriarch picks a paper out of a special box, and that paper determines whether or not his family is chosen or exempt. The members of the chosen family must then each draw individually until one member draws the paper with the special mark on it. The "winner" is stoned by all the members of the town including her own husband and children. It is chilling and ghastly and hard to read.
So why, then, did I pull it out and share it with my students this week? Well, there was an incident at school where a student tweeted something that he thought was funny but that many of us felt was highly inappropriate. It was, at the very least, thoughtless and at the very worst, cruel and divisive. Several faculty members were outraged; much of the student body (even those who were members of the groups he was targeting) were fairly apathetic. They chalked it up to a lack of sensitivity or an awkward attempt at humor. They forgave him easily and quickly. They wanted the whole thing to go away. No one jumped up and defended the people whom he had maligned. There was no student-lead outcry.
The unfortunate incident made me think of "The Lottery." It made me think about the way in which humans--in groups--often sink to the lowest common denominator. It made me think about peer pressure and apathy and about traditions that should be re-considered. Our conversations this week were very interesting. Some of the students couldn't get past the over-the-top nature of the story until I explained that Jackson was really writing a fable. If we can get past the extreme nature of the lottery, we can begin to think about some of the things we accept without questioning them.
I asked them to think of times in history that reminded them of this story. We talked about the Holocaust, slavery, the Salem Witch Trials, and the draft during the Vietnam War. We also talked about hazing in college fraternities and sororities. We talked about the way that hazing is perpetuated because the victims feel entitled to become the perpetrators, and the cycle continues over and over again. I then moved the conversation a little closer to home.
I told them that when I arrived at this school six years ago, it was a tradition for the senior class to toilet-paper the quad in the spring of their senior year. I told them that, while the quad looked magical the next morning covered in white toilet paper, and while the seniors seemed to love the experience of doing this activity as a class, it struck me as odd. I explained that I was looking at the event with fresh eyes; I was an outsider. To me, it seemed terribly wasteful to buy rolls and rolls of toilet paper to use in this way. It also seemed to go against all the eco-friendly advances most schools and organizations are trying to make. However, the most egregious part of the tradition to me was the fact that the following day, the school's maintenance workers had to spend hours and hours cleaning up the mess. They had multiple ladders out so that they could pull toilet paper off the uppermost branches of the trees. They spent most of their day pulling toilet paper off the ground, away from the shrubs and out of the trees. I couldn't imagine how it could seem appropriate to sanction an activity that was so wasteful and unnecessary and which caused so much extra work for school staff members. I am happy to report that, without any intervention from me, the tradition quietly ended. I don't know who lead the charge to abandon it, but I am grateful that someone felt strongly enough about it to fight the hold that traditions have on communities such as ours.
Perhaps everyone should re-read "The Lottery" at different stages of their lives as a reminder of the importance of asking questions. In the story, Tessie questions the tradition only after her own family has been chosen. Her greatest complaints happen when she herself has been singled out for stoning. At that point, she seems like a sore loser and no one is willing to listen to her. We talked about how the more power you have, the more likely it is that you will be heard when trying to change something. We agreed that it would be highly unlikely that a college freshman who was undergoing hazing would be able to put an end to it. The students agreed that it would take an upperclassmen, probably someone in a position of leadership in the fraternity, to make change happen. As JFK (I think???) said, "With privilege comes responsibility!"
One last little aside: I had always assumed that Jackson must have had a dark soul to have written such a terrifying story, but then I came across, LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES. I don't remember how I stumbled upon it, but I was a young mother and I was eager to read stories of other women who had loved the challenging, engaging and exhausting job of being at home with young kids. I loved this book. I loved her warmth and her sense of humor. I loved the pure, fierce love she had for her four wild and wonderful kids. It is simply charming and made me transform my view of Jackson from a creepy woman to a warm and wonderful writer/mother. This is purely conjecture, but, perhaps, it was the strong mother lioness in her that caused her write "The Lottery" in the first place. Perhaps, she wanted
her children to grow up in a world where everyone would stand up against injustice and fight to change those things that needed to be changed.
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