Context
This article is a creative-critical response to Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (1948). It includes a previously unpublished short story, “Show Day” (Overall 2024), inspired by Jacckson’s work, and discusses both fictions in relation to sacrifice, folk practices and the Folk Horror genre.

Scapegoating and sacrifice
James Frazer’s The Golden Bough ([1890] 1987) is a catalogue of magic, mythology, religion, and ritual. The examples below, of sacrificial stoning in Ancient Greece, are just a snippet of Frazer’s account of “scapegoating” practices. While Leviticus (NIV 16) calls for two goats to bear the sins of a community--one cast into the wilderness and the other sacrificed, according to the drawing of lots--the scapegoats here are people, chosen and killed by their own community:

it appears that every year, at the festival of the Thargelia in May, two victims, one for the men and one for the women, were led out of Athens and stoned to death. The city of Abdera in Thrace was publicly purified once a year, and one of the burghers, set apart for the purpose, was stoned to death as a scapegoat or vicarious sacrifice for the life of all the others. (Frazer 579)

Through his study of comparative religion, Frazer proposed that ritual murder and fertility rites were at the root of most ancient religions, identifying connecting symbols and practices across cultures, such as scapegoating, the drawing of lots, and seasonally defined sacrifice. Whatever one makes of Frazer’s conclusions, given the leaps of scholarship he made to arrive at them, this material has provided rich fodder for creators of folk horror. 

“The Lottery”’ as folk horror
Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” (1948) combines the timelessness of folk horror with an everyday, rural setting contemporary to the date of publication. Reading “The Lottery” reminds us that, under a particular set of circumstances, such homegrown horror might happen in any small community; this article seeks to understand what these circumstances are, through the lens of the folk horror genre, and to demonstrate how they can be applied to the creation of a new folk horror story inspired by Jackson’s approach.

It is simple enough to map the Frazerian thesis of ritual murder onto Jackson’s story: a community sacrifices one of its own, choosing the victim by lots. The practice happens once a year and is (distantly) connected to ensuring a good harvest. Aside from these traits, the story shares other elements that are quintessential characteristics of folk horror. Drawing primarily on examples from cinema, Adam Scovell defines the genre by identifying key elements in a “folk horror chain” (Scovell 15-24). According to his definition, folk horror is formed from a specific brew of landscape and isolation, skewed belief systems and morality, and a happening or summoning (16-18). These are all present in Jackson’s story: the action takes place within the defined space of the village square, in what appears to be a New England locale (the resonances of which we will return to); the community, though not wholly cut off from the outside world, acts as a self-sustaining bubble, complete with social hierarchies; the ritual of the lottery offers a shared belief system that, though tentatively questioned by some, is nevertheless sustained by all; and the shocking climax of neighbors and relatives stoning one of their own to death is an extreme “happening." In The Myth of the Eternal Return, Mircea Eliade describes the moment when “profane time” is abolished and the individual crosses, through ritual action, into “mythical time” (35): as such, the lottery itself could also be described as a “summoning” of a communal past, echoed through a (deteriorating and barely remembered) ritual practice.

Folk horror thrives upon rurality, building “its sense of the horrific around societies and groups of people” who live apart from the multiplicity and diversity of the city, generating a sense of “the otherness that can be attributed to rural life” (Scovell 80). The genre presents communities in close proximity to the land, with a degree of self-sufficiency rather than an urban reliance on external networks. In a small town or village, everyone knows everyone else’s business, ensuring control and compliance as well as interdependence. This is evident in “The Lottery," when questions about familial arrangements ‒ who will draw lots for whom ‒ are acknowledged as a mere formality: “'Don’t you have a grown boy to do it for you, Janey?' Although Mr. Summers and everyone else in the village knew the answer perfectly well, it was the business of the official of the lottery to ask such questions formally" (Jackson 4). Small populations with limited demographic diversity, where a plurality of views is unlikely, present an ideal situation for the skewed beliefs of folk horror to develop and prosper. Scovell directly links rurality and violence (Scovell 79-120), and in his discussion of “Backwoods Horror," where characters in remote settings are physically hostile to outsiders, he implies that the horror lies not in the otherness of the rural aggressors, but in how familiar they are to us: they are “not literally backwards; the discomfort actually comes from their recognisability” (91).

Alongside the importance of rural settings, Dawn Keetley considers the function of the folkloric in folk horror, stating that the genre “is distinctive in rooting its horror in the local community bound together by inherited tales” (Keetley 4). This bond transcends technology, modern mass communication and social media, enabling folk horror to thrive wherever intergenerational roots can be tapped: "Folk horror actively works against the critical arc of folklore studies, forging a divide between tradition and modernity... In opposition to the processes of modernity…folk horror seeks to re-enchant the traditional, oral, and rural as storehouses of folk tales and rituals" (Keetley 5). Despite Old Man Warner’s complaints about things not being “the way they used to be," the advances of the twentieth century have not yet put a stop to the custom of the lottery (Jackson 7).

Whether the folktales and rituals present in folk horror have any parallels with ancient rites, continuing traditions or contemporary inventions is, likewise, not the issue: what matters is that they are “true” to the community represented in the story. The lottery is real for the inhabitants of Jackson’s village, although practical elements of the custom are lost, and its original meaning has been reduced to Old Man Warner’s saw “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon” (5). The associated ritual is forgotten, the special chant and salute have lapsed, and paper slips have replaced the original wooden chips, but the box that holds them contains a vestige of the village’s past, and is old enough to be treated as sacrosanct:


Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. (Jackson 3)


Despite rumblings of other villages “quitting” lotteries, the folk of Jackson’s story continue to practice it because it contains meaning for them, however obscure its origins. Here, we might see a connection to a particular reading of Frazer, recorded in note form by the philosopher Ludvic Wittgenstein (Cioffi 1998). For Wittgenstein, the significance of a ritual custom lies not in historical explanation, but in the meaning it has for its practitioners, and in turn, the impression it makes upon “outsiders” watching on. When reading Frazer’s account of Beltane Fire Festivals (Frazer 617-622), what strikes Wittgenstein as sinister is not just learning of the custom’s possible origins in sacrificial practice, but the sense that “we impute it from an experience in ourselves” (Cioffi 90). In other words, we recognize something of the compunction to sacrifice, and the custom thereby gains “depth” of significance. When we witness a folk practice that echoes ritual, we know there is something meaningful going on, even if the actions have become mechanical or stylized, and much of the original meaning lost. We reach back beyond ourselves, making connections between self, others and the past. Regardless of whether or not we accept we are watching a form of sacrificial reenactment, our acknowledgement of what humans have done and are capable of doing to each other is powerful in itself. As Wittgenstein states, “Aren’t ideas frightening? […] Hasn’t the thought something terrible?” (82). The ideas in Jackson’s story are indeed frightening and terrible, and, like Wittgenstein, we experience a vicarious shiver when we read and reflect upon them.

Fear, cohesion, and control
The politics of fear run quietly through “The Lottery," visible on the surface only when the fateful lot is drawn and the victim dares to object. Jackson’s story appeared during a period of post-war reckoning, and compelling arguments have been made for reading its act of ritual scapegoating as a reflection of mid-century anxieties. Gayle Whittier acknowledges the story’s influence on a contemporary readership “caught between recent history--the Holocaust, with its explosion of the myth of Western Civilization – and the McCarthy era with its wholesale scapegoating of 'unAmericans' nearer home” (Whittier 354). Against this backdrop, Whittier argues for the story as a misogynist fable, drawing parallels between the historical atrocities of the witch trials, conjured by the story’s New England setting, and the everyday oppression of women in post-war, patriarchal society. Organized by men, with the fate of each household resting on the lots drawn by men, the story’s lottery functions as a shorthand for gender imbalance and control (358). With her lack of quiet compliance, Tessie Hutchinson is revealed as the ideal scapegoat: immediately marked as “marginal” (357) through her late appearance, she makes irreverent jokes, is “unmotherly” (358) and loud; a “nonconforming scold” (360), “untoward and vocal” (353), who will ultimately be made to “shut up” (335).

As Scovell notes, the violence in folk horror often erupts when small-town locals turn against outsiders (91); in “The Lottery," it is one of the townsfolk who must be othered, and therefore turned upon. According to Whittier’s reading, Tessie is the perfect candidate. As Bernice M. Murphy states, the threat of Jackson’s rural locations “comes more typically from one’s neighbours than one’s self” (“People of the Village” 113). “The Lottery” plays out contemporary anxieties of scapegoating and informing upon members of one’s own community, in a small-town milieu reflecting Jackson’s own experience of life in rural New England. Murphy expands upon her reading of Jackson’s work, referring to “The Lottery” as a modern “Community in the Wilderness” narrative in “the long tradition of the fatally flawed utopia in American fiction” (Rural Gothic 75). When the villagers stone Tessie, they do so together, sharing the responsibility: even Tessie’s children are complicit in her killing. The act of ritual murder binds the community, strengthening and sustaining cohesion. As Murphy states, the killing of Tessie “reenforces one of Jackson’s most notable recurring themes: the idea that community spirit isn’t necessarily a good thing” (Rural Gothic 83). 

Jackson’s contemporary readers could find a distinct parallel for violent acts of togetherness perpetrated by a flawed utopia, and the traumatic selection of individuals from the community, in the Nazi atrocities exposed in the immediate aftermath of World War II. At the time of the story’s publication, accounts of the Holocaust were prominent in public consciousness: the recent Nuremberg Trials (1946-7), relayed in newsreel footage, were followed by international military tribunals in Tokyo (ending in November 1948), and first-hand accounts were available in the form of published survivor memoirs (IWM). Picking up from Whittier’s analysis of Jackson’s story, Michael Robinson draws attention to the bureaucratic trappings of the lottery, akin to Nazi administration systems, which presented a superimposition of the trappings of civilization upon indiscriminate brutality (Robinson 10). Robinson’s article unpacks the story in relation to its “particular moment,” arguing that the narrative distance itself “belongs to an abstract discourse on Holocaust-related themes that was being actively produced at the time of writing” (3).

A Holocaust reading of “The Lottery” brings to mind Hannah Arendt’s contentious term “the banality of evil," used in her discussion of the trial of Adolf Eichmann. That evil can be banal is reflected in the unquestioning carrying out of “instructions” involving the brutal killing of one’s friends and neighbors. Such evil can be bureaucratic or domestic. Echoing Whittier’s misogynist reading of “The Lottery,” and connecting these threads, folk horror writer Stephanie Ellis sees the humdrum nature of the small-town setting and humble, familiar actors as the most chilling factor of Jackson’s tale: "Authority is simply with the men--normal, everyday husbands, brothers, sons--and in a way, the mundanity of the steps of the ritual, the normality of the people, makes this a truly horrifying story" (emphasis added). 

The prospect that our friends and neighbors--even our own family-- could turn upon and destroy us is so horrific it transcends any historic moment. Jackson’s biographer Ruth Franklin sees the story’s power residing in its enduring applicability and relevance beyond the time of its publication, speaking to anxieties that are recurrent and timeless: "The story works as a mirror to reflect back to its readers their current preoccupations and concerns, which is why readers could see McCarthy in it 75 years ago and Trump in it today." Much of the power of horror is situated in the interplay between the familiar and the defamiliarized; that which at first sight we recognize as habitual, even banal, and the distortion of it, when we look again, into something strange and terrible (Overall "That which"). In “The Lottery," loved ones, friends and small children become murderous co-conspirators. The act of drawing names in a lottery is often associated with winning prizes or being selected for team games; the pleasurable sense of anticipation associated with a tombola is skewed into the terror of awaiting sacrificial selection.

Wittgenstein’s notes on Frazer’s Beltane Fire Festivals include a particular shudder of horror at the practice of using cakes for drawing lots (Cioffi 92-93), the intended victim receiving both a sweet gift and a death sentence. In his commentary on Wittgenstein’s notes, Frank Cioffi suggests that use of a cake as a sacrificial selection tool represents “the eruption of the demonic into the quotidian, or reminders of the domestic in the midst of the tragic” (92). We recognize the instrument of horror as something everyday and familiar. The mechanics of the ritual selection feels plausible too: even “the use of the cakes for drawing lots is just the kind of thing Wittgenstein says we could invent for ourselves” (92). In “The Lottery,” the townsfolk discuss everyday concerns while waiting to draw lots from a box that we can easily imagine being used for the raffle at a school fete, and the victim herself is late, delayed by the daily chore of washing up.

Opening the door
Wittgenstein states that the impression of a folk custom whose “inner character” evokes human sacrifice unleashes a “crush of thoughts that do not get out because they all try to push forward
and are wedged in the door” (Cioffi 82). Anyone who has watched a folk performance or ritual of this type will recognize the unsettling feeling, the itch to comprehend something unfathomable, that Wittgenstein describes. Rather than being soothed by a historical explanation for a custom, which gives us the reassurance of distance, we find ourselves troubled by a stampede of thoughts that require disentangling. One of these thoughts might well be: how would such a ritual look now, in my life, amongst my friends and neighbors? Jackson offers us her answer in “The Lottery," opening the door wide enough for us to see the horror play out in small-town, mid-century America.

For my own answer, I offer my story “Show Day,” set in a rural English town that reflects my local environment. As Jackson’s story taps into the anxieties of the American post- war era, so this short fiction responds to issues prevalent in contemporary Britain: the rise of public shaming, exacerbated by social media; fears about environmental collapse leading to crop failure; and ongoing concerns about post-Brexit insularity in a time of culture wars and political division.

Alongside the horror and the social commentary, Jackson’s story ripples with dark humor; there’s a bittersweetness here, a sense that Jackson is wryly poking fun at the inhabitants of her fictional village, whose small concerns and fixed need to maintain the status quo crowd out the enormity of their actions. Aiming for a similar effect, the characters in my story appear to be preparing for the town’s Annual Show; a common event around the time of the summer harvest, this is an opportunity for members of the community to show off their finest homegrown and homemade produce. From the best jams and cakes to the largest marrow and tallest sunflower, the Annual Show is a traditional celebration of rural life--and where judging and prizes are involved, an opportunity to publicly outshine one’s neighbors. The potential for village, town and county shows to become hotbeds of rivalry and foul play has been explored in the cozy crime genre,  but as Jackson’s work shows us, the combination of rural setting, small community and seasonal custom lends itself to a much darker, Frazerian treatment.

In a time of scarcity and decentralized society, the townsfolk in “Show Day” are given specific crops to grow on behalf of the community, with their respective yields displayed in an echo of the harvest festival tradition. In a folk horror reversal of the “Best in Show” competition, the household judged to have produced the poorest fare must pay a blood tithe to keep their place in the community, feeding the land and satisfying their neighbors’ sense of justice. As in Jackson’s story, an individual’s response to being “chosen” encompasses denial, bargaining, and the horrific realization of being at the mercy of one’s friends and neighbors, all of whom are witness to and complicit in this victimization. Although there is no ritual stoning or drawing of lots, the act of scapegoating remains; and while the townsfolk can work towards the prospect of success, they do so with the knowledge that the weather, climate, pests and diseases, and possibly their own neighbors, are working against them. Is this more cruel than the “blind chance” of the lottery? Either way, when it comes to human sacrifice, it’s only those left standing who can say whether the results are, or are not, “fair” or “right.”

Show Day
The town awoke early on Show Day. Crates were stacked by the back doors of the houses in preparation, ready for filling. Each family’s trestle table lay with its hinged legs folded beneath it
by the gate, patient as an old dog. Handcarts and barrows, their wheel-hubs freshly oiled and tyres pumped, rested in alleyways. Some families had stayed up all night: watering, checking
defences, waiting for a dawn harvest.

By ten-thirty all the crates were filled and loaded, and by quarter-to-noon, the trestles were set out in the marketplace, stacked high with produce. Children skipped between rows and eyed the fruit yields. Their parents arranged and rearranged displays. The bustle was focussed, voices quiet, conversations polite but brief.

This year, the Franklins and the Aldridges were on tubers. Mr. Franklin unloaded the family’s crates. Will Franklin and his mother arranged the table display, topping crates up from the sacks and placing the largest potatoes on top. From the corner of an eye, Will watched the Aldridges and the Masons setting up on either side of them. The Masons were on chard and spinach, and young Maddy Mason was primping a bundle of green and purple leaves like she was arranging flowers. The Aldridges’ yield of maincrop potatoes seemed unending. Mr. Aldridge emptied a second sack onto the trestle top; Mrs. Aldridge, standing against the ledge to stop the potatoes tumbling off, picked out the best for display. A few slipped to the floor and Will saw her gather them up and rub them against her apron. The potatoes were bigger than his fist, the skin creamy-coloured, dimpled with eyes. Will looked away.

There was nothing to worry about. The Franklins had a good yield. For once there’d been plenty of rain, plenty of sun, and they had worked hard, feeding, weeding and protecting the crop. Things had gone well enough that the afternoon before, despite it being the Eve of Show Day, Will’s father had let him go off until watering time. Many of the young folk found themselves with time on their hands. A group of children played tag around the streets. The sun was late in setting. Will and Jenny Masters sat on a bench and held hands. It had seemed like any other late summer Saturday: balmy, heavy, the bats swooping over the pond as lights appeared in windows.

After dusk, Will and his parents had finished lifting and bagging the last of the potatoes. It was heavy work, but he was thankful they weren’t on a soft crop. Will was only six the year the Franklins grew tomatoes, but even now the smell of them took him right back to that Show Day Eve, falling asleep in the greenhouse to the sound of his parents whispering, turning the fruit, the sweep of their torches, the smell of vines and fading heat and damp earth, the excited fizzing in his stomach at knowing something big was coming.

Will looked over at his friends Hugh and Pete Miller. The spread on the Miller trestle was lower than many others, but as Will reasoned, they were on beans this year, and if they had already podded some of the yield for drying, there wouldn’t be much bulk. He noticed that Hugh looked paler than usual. Pete had hinted to Will back in the spring that the first sowing had gone poorly, but he hadn’t mentioned anything since. Will was something of a favourite with Mrs. Miller; he gave her a small wave, but she didn’t seem to notice.

The Masters and the Franklins didn’t know each other well, but as Jenny and Will were only children and getting serious, their parents made an effort to get along. Jenny’s father Mr. Masters came over to wish the Franklins luck.

“What’s the variety?” he said.

Mrs. Franklin held up bulbous pink potato. “Fir apple,” she said, brushing at a hook of dirt with her thumb.

“Looks good. Are they all that big?”

“Wish I could say so. The small ones are sweet though.”

Mr. Masters smiled. “Had a taste?”

Mrs. Franklin laughed and shook her head. “You know,” she said. “Just the one.”

No one would think of touching their own yield before Show Day, but it was good luck to cut and share one piece of produce with the family on Last Sunday, whether it be a spray of currants or a single pea pod. Mrs. Franklin had carefully unearthed a single potato from the patch, scrubbed it under the sink, sliced it into three pieces and steamed it in a little milk. Will had pressed his potato piece against the roof of his mouth with his tongue, the better to savour it. The rest of the meal had come from cans and jars in the pantry. The potato was a great treat, a taste of good things to come.

“How’s your yield?” Mrs. Franklin asked.

“Fine,” said Mr. Mason. “We’re on brassicas this year.”

“So Will told me. I don’t envy you.”

“It’s not so bad. We used mesh and didn’t lose too many.”

“I’d worry about slugs.”

“Slugs you can catch,” said Mr. Masters. “Whites are another matter.”

The noon chimes began. The adults nodded to each other. Will and Mr. Masters shook hands. Will watched as his sweetheart’s father walked back to their trestle. It was loaded with summer cabbages, hard pale cones cupped between the over-sided hands of dark, outer leaves. Jenny and her mother stood back, admiring their display.

One year, long before Will was born, the rabbit-proof fence around the Harrison’s brassica patch was cut with wires. It was a couple of nights before Show Day. The Harrisons fixed the fence to protect what was left, but it was already too late. Folk still talked of it. No on  knew who did it. That was a drought year, the topsoil blowing like dust, and all the families struggled. Some wondered if the yield was so poor the Harrisons cut the fence themselves. Either way, they’d spent that year on half-rations. The Harrisons were a proud sort, and people were happy to see them taken down a peg.

Back when Will’s father had been a boy there’d been a feud between neighbours, the Bakers and Fosters. It was a terrible business, Mr. Franklin told him. Mrs. Baker suspected that Mrs. Foster, a widow, had set her sights on Mr. Baker. She’d seen the pair talking over the fence and spied her husband heading along the path between their houses with a sack of compost. When she unlocked their store to check, the supply was short. Mrs. Baker screamed at Mrs. Foster in the street, and the eldest Foster boy gave Mr. Baker a black eye. Feeling ran high, and the Fosters’ patch was wrecked in the night. The Fosters waterlogged the Baker patch in retaliation. Mr. Franklin said it was a lesson for everyone, and the last Show Day for both households.

The Judges came out of the town hall and made their way across the marketplace. The bell stopped, the twelfth chime hanging thick and brassy in the warm air. The Judges stood on the dais by the old pump. Deputy Harold put a chair beside the pump and set up the loudhailer. Against the stillness and the faint buzz of insects and the odd shuffling of restless feet, the Judges said all the usual things about the importance of Show Day. When he was smaller, Will had enjoyed the feeling of holiday that came with the formalities. Now he just wanted the judging to be over so he could go to Jenny. She was shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. One day she would join him at the Franklin table and they would have their own children to help with the yield. Show Day would be a different matter then. 

The Judges circulated with the list. A cheer went up when the Johnsons, who were on gourds, held up their largest vegetable marrow. Mr. Franklin nudged his son’s elbow.

“Nothing but air and water, Will,” he said. “When they get that size, they cook down to nothing.”

“Aren’t they good for seeds though?”

Mr. Franklin grunted. “Seeds are all well and good, but we need flesh too.”

The Judges made their way along the rows. At last, they were at the Aldridges. Judge Felix smiled and nodded, picking out the largest potatoes. Will clenched his fists.

“Excellent,” said Judge Rose. She made a mark on the list.

The Judges stood at the Franklins’ table and Will noticed how shabby their robes looked up-close, faded in the folds and moth-holed from years of hanging. Judge Rose’s black collar had been mended with dark blue thread. She signalled for the crates to be spread out. Will unstacked them and Judge Felix tipped out the lowest one, scattering knobbly fingers of fir apples across the trestle top.

“A fair yield,” said Judge Rose.

She made another mark on the list and they moved along to inspect the Masons’ table.

Will let out a sigh. Mr. Franklin put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. Mrs. Franklin pressed her cheek against it and closed her eyes. When Will looked up he saw Jenny watching and gave her a reassuring nod.

The Masters did well, with Judge Felix openly commending their cabbage display. The Judges moved through brassicas to roots, the fruit yields, and eventually onto legumes. Will watched as they approached the Millers. Judge Rose and Mrs. Miller talked. Hugh Miller held onto his father’s elbow. Young Pete Miller looked unsteady on his feet, gripping the edge of the trestle top.

The Judges finished their rounds and returned to the dais. Judge Felix stood at the loudhailer.

“Neighbours, let us call in those selected at the last Show Day."

Deputy Harold wheeled someone through the crowd. It was Samuel Smith, although it took Will a moment to recognise him. Samuel’s eyes were screwed up against the sun. He wore a woollen cap and tugged at the blanket on his lap like it was winter. The rest of the Smith family followed behind, shaved heads bowed. The Smiths had been on soft fruits last year. Blight had taken much of the late raspberry crop. Samuel, being the strongest, had volunteered the most.

“Poor Sam,” whispered Mrs. Franklin.

“He’ll recover,” said her husband. “He’s young.”

Judge Felix bowed to the Smiths as they filed past. They took their places back in the murmuring crowd, clustering around Samuel’s wheelchair.

Judge Rose presented Deputy Harold with the list. He leaned towards the loudhailer. Will held his breath.

“Millers,” said the Deputy.

A sigh went through the crowd. Everyone turned to look at the Millers.

“Oh, Will,” said Mrs. Franklin, and gripped his arm.

Mr. Miller covered his face with his hands. Mrs. Miller clutched at her sons. Deputy Harold made his way across the marketplace to bring them out.

“The aphids took the first crop,” said Mr. Miller. “We did everything we could.”

“My boys have already offered!” Mrs. Miller cried. She tugged at Pete’s right shirt sleeve and held up his arm. Even from where he stood, Will could see the red crosses of older scars above the bandages. Hugh rolled up his own sleeves and, head hanging, put his hands up too. One of his bandages was still weeping.

“It is clear you have made every effort,” Judge Felix said. “But the selection has been made.”

Judge Rose leaned forwards. The loudhailer crackled.

“Choose your strongest,” she said.

Mr. Miller went out to meet the Deputy. “The boys need time to recover,” he called out. “I’ll go first.”

Deputy Harold led Mr. Miller to the old pump and sat him on the chair. He bound Mr. Miller’s hands with one end of a long rope and began to shave his head. When she saw the razor, Mrs. Miller began to wail, but the ringing of the town hall bell soon drowned her out.

“Well,” said Mrs. Aldridge’s voice, bright and high behind Will. “Guess that’s it for another year.”

Will glanced over at Jenny. She was saying something to her mother, the pair of them smiling and laughing. When Will looked back the Millers were standing in a line, ready. Deputy Harold stood Mr. Miller up and led him to the front. His head looked vulnerable and somehow indecent, the skin broken in places where the razor had caught. Mrs. Miller looked fixedly at the ground. Will could see her shoulders shaking.

The Judges made their way back to the town hall. Deputy Harold stropped the razor in preparation for the first offering. He wound the end of Mr. Miller’s rope around his fist, but there was no sign he would struggle. The crowd began to break into chattering groups. Will was one of the few still watching as the Millers were led away to the compost site.

Works Cited
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Viking, 1963.

Beaton, Marion Chesney. A Spoonful of Poison. Little Brown, 2008.

Cioffi, Frank. Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Freud and Frazer. Cambridge UP, 1998.

Coles, Catherine. Daggers at the Country Fair. Boldwood, 2022.

---. Poison at the Village Show. Boldwood, 2022.

Eliade, Mircea. The Myth of the Eternal Return. Arkana, Penguin, [1954] 1989.

Ellis, Stephanie. “It takes a village…” Darkness in the Fields: Midsummer 2, Alex Davies Events, 23 June 2024.

Franklin, Ruth. “75 Years Ago, ‘The Lottery’ Went Viral. There’s a Reason We’re Still Talking About It.” New York Times, 26 Jun. 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/26/opinion/the-lottery-fiction.html. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.

Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough. Papermac, Pan Macmillan, [1890] 1987.

IWM. “Nuremberg Trials.” International War Museum, https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/nuremberg-trials-films-that-brought-the-nazis-to-justice. Accessed 24 Aug.2024.

Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” New Yorker Magazine, 1948, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine /1948/06/26/the-lottery. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Keetley, Dawn. “Defining Folk Horror.” Folk Horror, Revenant Journal, 5, Mar. 2020, 1-32.

Murphy, Bernice M. “The People of the Village Have Always Hated Us: Shirley Jackson’s New England Gothic.” Shirley Jackson: Essays on the Literary Legacy, edited by Bernice M. Murphy, McFarland, 2005, 104-126.

Murphy, Bernice. The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

New International Version. Leviticus. Bible Gateway, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2016&version=NIV. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Overall, Sonia. “That which washes ashore.” The Totem, Seaside Gothic, Dec. 2023.

Robinson, Michael. “Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Holocaust Literature.” Humanities, vol. 8 no.1, 35, 2019, doi:10.3390/ h8010035.

Scovell, Adam. Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange. Auteur, 2017.

Shaffer, Alan, screenwriter, and Robin Hardy, director. The Wicker Man. British Lion Films, 1973.

Tryon, Thomas. Harvest Home. Alfred A. Knopf, 1973.

Whittier, Gayle. ““The Lottery” as Misogynist Parable.” Women’s Studies, vol. 18, 1991, 353-366.