Happy Birthday, The Lottery

Shirley Jackson's classic The Lottery came out on this date back in 1948, and raised the hairs on the back of more than a few necks:

“The Lottery” takes the classic theme of man’s inhumanity to man and gives it an additional twist: the randomness inherent in brutality. It anticipates the way we would come to understand the twentieth century’s unique lessons about the capacity of ordinary citizens to do evil—from the Nazi camp bureaucracy, to the Communist societies that depended on the betrayal of neighbor by neighbor and the experiments by the psychologists Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo demonstrating how little is required to induce strangers to turn against each other. In 1948, with the fresh horrors of the Second World War barely receding into memory and the Red Scare just beginning, it is no wonder that the story’s first readers reacted so vehemently to this ugly glimpse of their own faces in the mirror, even if they did not realize exactly what they were looking at.

Of course as you well know, The Gnat and I were in a 7th grade performance of The Lottery:

Also, it reminds me of the time in 7th grade when Mr. Russell's class performed Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. I can't remember who I played, for some reason I'm thinking Devareaux, but I might not know what the fuck I'm talking about. Maybe The Gnat remembers who he played?

There's also this:

Larry Yust's short film, The Lottery (1969), produced as part of Encyclopædia Britannica's 'Short Story Showcase' series, was ranked by the Academic Film Archive "as one of the two bestselling educational films ever". It has an accompanying ten-minute commentary film, Discussion of "The Lottery" by USC English professor Dr. James Durbin.