Harvesting

Harvesting
A good harvest has always been vital to civilizations. After the fields have been prepared and the seeds sown, the farmer can only wait and hope that the proper balance of rain and sun will ensure a good harvest. From this hope springs ritual. Many ancient cultures believed that growing crops represented the life cycle, beginning with what one associates with the end-death. Seeds buried, apparently without hope of germination, represent death. But with the life forces of water and the sun, the seed grows, representing rebirth. Consequently, ancient peoples began sacrificial rituals to emulate this resurrection cycle. What began as a vegetation ritual developed into a cathartic cleansing of an entire tribe or village. By transferring one’s sins to persons or animals and then sacrificing them, people believed that their sins would be eliminated, a process that has been termed the “scapegoat” archetype (Guerin et al. 158). In her short story “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson uses this archetype to build on man’s inherent need for such ritual.

Jackson weaves seasonal and life-death cycle archetypes, which coincide with vegetation rituals, into the story. According to. Carl Jung, archetypes can be considered “complexes of experience that come upon us like fate” (30), a past collective experience represented in rituals, symbols, and motifs. The lottery takes place every year when the nature cycle peaks in midsummer, a time usually associated with cheerfulness. Mr. Summers, a jovial man who conducts the lottery ceremony, sets the tone of the event with both his name and his mannerisms. But lurking behind him, Mr. Graves quietly assists, his name hinting at a dark undertone. The picniclike atmosphere betrays the serious consequence of the lottery, for like the seed, a sacrificial person must also be buried to bring forth life. Jackson creates balance by juxtaposing Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves to share in the responsibilities of the ritual: Life brings death, and death recycles life.

At one point in the village’s history, the lottery represented a grave experience, and all who participated understood the profound meaning of the tradition. But as time passed, the villagers began to take the ritual lightly. They endure it almost as automatons-“actors” anxious to return to their mundane, workaday lives (Jackson 76). Old Man Warner, the only one who seems to recall the seriousness of the occasion, complains that Mr. Summers jokes with everybody (77). But why do the villagers cling to tradition when they no longer find meaning in the ritual? Jung posits that even if one does not understand the meaning, the experience provides the “individual a place and a meaning in the life of the generations” (188). Because there has “always been a lottery” (Jackson 77), the villagers feel compelled to continue this horrifying tradition. They do focus, however, on its gruesome rather than its symbolic nature, for they “still remembered to use stones” even after they have “forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box” (79). The story thus takes the stance that humanity’s inclination toward violence overshadows society’s need for civilized traditions.

“The Lottery” first appeared in The New Yorker in 1948. Subsequently, distraught readers-uncomfortable with the idea of a relatively modern culture committing such a heinous act-questioned Jackson’s intentions. She responded that she wanted to dramatize graphically the “pointless violence” in people’s lives (Friedman 64), to reveal the general inhumanity of man. Jung’s view is that even “more or less civilized” people remain inwardly primitive (269). When no recollection of a ritual’s symbolism exists, the “mass psyche” becomes the “hypnotic focus of fascination, drawing everyone under its spell” (127). The group experience, then, lowers the “level of consciousness J. . .] like the psyche of an animal” (125). Therefore, the base actions exhibited in groups (such as the stoning of Mrs. Hutchinson) do not take place on the individual level, for here such action would be deemed “murder.” On the group level people classify their heinous act simply as “ritual.” When Mrs. Hutchinson arrives at the ceremony late, she chats sociably with Mrs.

Delacroix. Nevertheless, after Mrs. Hutchinson falls victim to the lottery selection, Mrs. Delacroix chooses a “stone so large” that she must pick it up with both hands (79). Whereas, on the individual level, the two women regard each other as friends, on the group level, they betray that relationship, satiating the mob mentality.

Although civilized people may no longer hold lotteries, Jackson’s story illustrates that society’s tendency toward violence and its tendency to hold onto tradition, even meaningless, base tradition, reveal our need for both ritual and belonging.

Eight Steps for Writing a Summary
Be sure to read all eight steps before you begin since some of these steps overlap.
Step One: Read the entire work (article, essay, short story, novel, etc.) at least twice before you write your summary. Be sure to use tan active reading process in order to gain a thorough understanding of the work. It is essential to first understand an author’s main and support points in a work before you can summarize them.
Step Two: Be brief; a summary is a condensed form of the work’s main ideas. Usually a summary is about one paragraph to each 2-3 pages of original text.
Step Three: Write the summary in your own words, not the words of the author (no direct quotes in a summary). Tip: In order to avoid writing the summary in the same words or same style as the original author, try re-reading one section of the work at a time (a couple of paragraphs to a page or so); then, close the book and write a few lines of summary for the section you read. Then, open the text again, and be sure you included all of the author’s main ideas from that section. It also helps to verbally summarize the article to a friend first, explaining it in your own words before you write a formal summary.
Step Four: Stay Objective. Do not offer your opinion in the summary itself. Add no interpretation. Do not agree or disagree: just summarize objectively.
Step Five: In your first sentence, name the author and the work you are summarizing. Give some general information about the topic.
Step Six: State the author’s main idea–the overall thesis (in your own words). Answer this question: What is the main message of this work?
Step Seven: Summaries longer than 200 words should be divided into 2 or more paragraphs.
Step Eight: Evaluate, revise and edit the summary. Go back and re-read the work while double-checking your summary for accuracy. Also, check to make sure you haven’t left out any main ideas or arguments and that you haven’t included any supporting details that are not needed. Check to make sure you consistently used your own words and that you did not offer any judgment or opinion in the summary (you stayed objective in your summary). Finally, check for grammar and spelling errors and overall sentence variety and needed transitions.

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