The story takes place in a bucolic, unnamed village on June 27th of an unspecified year. The narrator begins by establishing the setting as a small-town, family-centered society that prizes tradition and communal responsibility above all else. Three children, recently on summer break, are the first to gather together in the town square. The adults soon join them, displaying the stereotypical warmth of small-town life and engaging in hearty discussions of work and gossip.
Jackson uses this scene to set the stage for the lottery, which will soon take center stage in the village. Despite the fact that everyone is aware that the lottery is a random event, there is an aura of reverence surrounding it. The villagers understand that their fates will be decided by the drawing of lots, which is believed to be divinely inspired. As the narrator watches, the men and women begin to select their stones from a pile prepared by the children. When the children’s selections are made, a general sigh is let out when little Dave’s paper is revealed to be blank. Then Nancy’s and Bill’s are shown to have black spots, and the mute Tessie’s has a single, black, vertical line.
While the casting of lots to determine fate has a long history, public lotteries to award material rewards are much more recent. The Continental Congress voted to hold a lottery in 1776 to raise funds for the American Revolution, but this plan was ultimately abandoned. However, private lotteries quickly proliferated and were later used to sell land and other property as well as to build prestigious American colleges such as Harvard, Dartmouth, and Yale.
In the immediate post-World War II period, state governments began to introduce lotteries as a way to generate revenues without raising taxes. Lotteries were seen as a painless alternative to more onerous taxation that would otherwise fund social safety net programs. Yet research has consistently shown that a state’s objective fiscal health does not correlate with its adoption or popularity of lotteries.
While it may be true that most people who play the lottery do so because they simply like to gamble, this reasoning obscures the fact that lotteries are regressive. Rather than promoting gambling as a recreational activity, state lotteries promote it as a vehicle for instant riches, appealing to lower-income communities in particular. As a result, they run at cross-purposes with the larger public interest.