Literary analysis of short stories

¶ … Domestic Demonism: '"the Lottery" by Shirley Jackson versus "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

Both "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson and "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor make effective use of surprise endings to illustrate the hypocrisies of modern life. In both stories, the main characters take cruel behavior for granted, and this proves to be their undoing. In "The Lottery" a town takes the fact that someone must die to allow the crops to grow for as a given, even though to the implied reader's outsider perspective this horrific assumption makes no sense. In "A Good Man is Hard to Find" a group of squabbling family members on a mundane family road trip suddenly find themselves faced with a serial killer who has been excluded by society, and they meet their end at his hands.

The Lottery" is a metaphor for human life in modern times, filled with a spirit of what has been called "Jackson's domestic demonism" by critics such as Tricia Lootens of the South Atlantic Review (Lootens 160). "The Lottery" suggests that people often take certain cruel aspects of society, like racial oppression and societal injustice, for granted. Some people lack basic necessities because of the prosperity of others in the developed world, but it is assumed that this is valid because this is the way things always have been. People only protest when their privileges are withdrawn. The ordinary nature of the stoning at the end of the story, and the wholesome innocence with which it is executed, is underlined by the fact that even the town's children are involved in the event. The story begins with the children gathering stones in their pockets. The death is considered a noble civic event that everyone accepts, because everyone participates, because it is an accepted tradition no one questions. It is called a civic obligation. "The lottery was conducted -- as were the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program -- by Mr. Summers. who had time and energy to devote to civic activities."

The end of Jackson's "The Lottery" is a "bleak epiphany" filled with "points at which evil...flashes out from everyday, realistic settings and characterizations" (Lootens 161). Tessie Hutchinson has evidently lived in the town her entire life, and enjoyed the comforts the small, inclusive community. She only protests when her name is chosen: "It isn't fair, it isn't right,' Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her." Her last words imply the death of someone else in the town would be 'right' if done in a 'fair' way. The idea of a single person being sacrificed for the good of the collective is horrifying and even more horrifying because it is not really necessary. The characters believe because the lottery has always been there, however cruel, it must be necessary and 'good.' "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns." The shocking ending with the ordinary nature of the vocabulary and people, the fact they take the need for the lottery for granted, and even the victim only questions its fairness, not the need (Mrs. Hutchinson is more concerned about getting her dishes done in time before the event, rather than the fact a death will occur), shows how people often take their culture's and society's accepted morality at face value.

Likewise, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor illustrates the cruelties of modern life. It too begins with ominous foreshadowing. The efforts of the old grandmother to look beautiful foreshadow her fate: "Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady." The attitude of the family is evident early on when visiting a roadside diner: "No I certainly wouldn't,' June Star said. 'I wouldn't live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks!' And she ran back to the table." The intrusion of the Misfit into the 'happy' (yet really unhappy) middle-class family's ordinary road trip ironically highlights the pettiness of their concerns, rather than the serial killer's. "It was the same case with Him [Jesus] as with me except He hadn't committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me." The wording of this explanation of his actions suggests, in O'Connor's moral schema, that the Misfit functions more as a force of nature, in contrast to the stoning in the Jackson tale. While reading "The Lottery," the reader wants to make the lottery stop; O'Connor's Misfit seems like an instrument of divine comeuppance or judgment, especially given the grandmother's religious revelation at the end of the tale before she dies. Flannery O'Connor, wrote Walter Elder in the Kenyon Review upon the publication of O'Connor's collection of stories, believes in a transcendent Christian vision and morality that must rise above the petty nature of modern life. "Miss O'Connor would have us believe that the only hope of salvation lies in the mercy of action. It grows out of agony, which is not denied to any man and is given in strange ways to children" (Elder 665). All human life is false, not just this particular American brand of falseness, suggests Elder in O'Connor's universe.