juxtaposition
ancient superstition
and modern setting
75, year ago, The Lottery by Shirly Jackson was printed in the New Yorker magazine and ever since, people have wondered what it meant.
In an exchange of letter’s between the author and the magazine, Ms. Jackson states that:
I am sorry to have to tell you that I have almost no information regarding Mr. Ross’s reaction to my story, “The Lottery.” I never met Mr. Ross, and all my dealings over the story were with Gus Lobrano;
I do know that when Gus called me to say that they were buying the story he asked — “for our own information” — if I cared to take any stand on the meaning of the story.
I was interested in what I naturally regarded as his only important remark—that they were buying the story — and while I was still fumbling for some happy phrase he asked if I thought the story meant that superstition was ignorant;
if the story might be called an allegory which made its point by an ironic juxtaposition of ancient superstition and modern setting.
I said yes, indeed, that would be fine, and he said, “Good; that’s what Mr. Ross thought it meant.”
Yes.
Indeed.
That would be fine.
The story was also summed in of all places (I was going to say oddly enough but to many things turn up here) in an episode of the Simpsons where the TV News announcer says the Lottery is “… a chilling tale of conformity gone mad.”
Yes.
Indeed.
That also would be fine.
Somehow, could it be, that The Lottery, as a chilling tale of conformity gone mad, and an allegory which made its point by an ironic juxtaposition of ancient superstition and modern setting is the key to Trump?
What does it mean?
Famously, Harold Ross, the editor of the New Yorker said, “I’ll never print another story I don’t understand.“
No Haiku For You 