Week 5, Question 1

1. Who do you think has power in “The Lottery”? WHY does this person(s) have power, and how is it articulated?
The person with the power in “The Lottery”, is quite obviously shared between two groups of people. The first person who has a lot of power is Mr. Summers. This is articulated in the story as the author, Shirley Jackson, first by her description of Summers as a “...round-faced, jovial man and he ran the coal business, and people were sorry for him, because he had no children and his wife was a scold.”(Jackson 839) Jackson foreshadows the event with the insight of how Summers is treaed by his wife because it gives the reader answers as to why Mrs. Hutchinson was selected as the recipient of “the lottery” by letting the reader know why he had some anger issues toward women. The author makes several comments in the story about the traditions that were a part of the upstart of such an event, and yet, the lottery is no longer really regulated. People do what they do but do not really ask why. Later in the story Tessie Hutchinson challenges Mr. Summers reasoning and authority when she says “You didn’t give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn’t fair” (Jackson 842). This questioning and non-abandonment to the social custom of “The Lottery”, is ultimately what caused her death. The second aspect of the shared power of “The Lottery” was the group of women that were a part of the community. They were the instigators and the first to begin the stoning. This act leads the reader to believe they enjoyed the act and rather than the act being solely tradition perhaps their enjoyment was more about malice, envy, and the other negative aspects of human nature, especially among women. You never know perhaps one of those women wanted Tessie’s husband as their own, or had some other motivation the story does not articulate but the social custom of “The Lottery” helped make that agenda come to pass.