How Suspense is Fueled in “The Lottery”
“The Lottery by Shirley Jackson has an astonishing ending. The surprise is reinforced by keeping the reader in the dark throughout the story. The use of a third person limited point of view serves to create suspense by keeping the reader from knowing what the characters know. The reader doesn’t know why the people in the town are uneasy, nor what Old Man Warner is talking about while he defends the lottery, nor even why Tessie Hutchinson keeps repeating that it isn’t fair. This makes the reader anticipate a dark ending, while still having no idea what it will be. Because the reader doesn’t know what the characters know, it leaves the reader wondering what will happen next.
At the beginning of the story, Shirley Jackson describes the townspeople assembling before the beginning of the lottery. The men are clearly uncomfortable. “They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed.” (Jackson, 1) Because the reader doesn’t know what’s going through any of their heads, we don’t know why they are uneasy. The reader might wonder why they aren’t happy; after all,
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The reader can understand this, but has no idea what is going through her head. We have no idea what she knows will happen. Clearly, a lottery is fair, that’s the whole point of having one. However, there is clearly an element of wishing she could pick again, of wishing it wasn’t her. We don’t know why she doesn’t want it to happen because we don’t know what it is that will inevitably happen. A lottery is so often a positive thing, so the reader wonders why no one wants to get picked. This curiosity to know what the characters know fuels the suspense of the reader right up until the very last “It wasn’t