Two Sylvias' Weekly Muse: March 24, 2024

Issue 100 🎉🎉

Hello, Muse Readers!

Many of us might remember being in our junior high or high school English class and being assigned the short story, The Lottery. The story is set in a small town “somewhere in America,” and each year, the townspeople come together to select an individual who will be stoned to death. The ritual is perhaps about securing a good harvest and banishing evil, but the story only hints at the meaning. Even the community itself isn’t clear about the reason for the annual sacrifice: …there’s always been a lottery.

Published in The New Yorker in 1948, this short story elicited more responses than any other previously published literary piece—and the majority of it was hate mail. People were angered and confused by the story and its author—Shirley Jackson. Jackson was a wonderfully quirky writer who brushed off the hate and continued, throughout her career, to write mysterious, scary, and odd stories.