Psychoanalysis of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

 Based on the readings for this module, identify the key components of one of the major theoretical schools to be studied in this class (psychoanalytic, feminist, Marxist, deconstructionist). On what kinds of questions or concerns is this theoretical approach built? How might this theory be used in an analysis of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”? Discuss specific characters, scenes, or imagery in the story and how it can be approached through your chosen theoretical lens.

Respond to at least two of your classmates. Select posts that take a theoretical approach different from your own and discuss the differences in perspective. What are the benefits of the other theoretical perspective? What are the disadvantages?

I have chosen psychoanalysis as my lens to look through Shirley Jacksons The Lottery. Key components of literary psychoanalytic are symbolism, condensation, and displacement. Freud used these components to break down the human conscious and subconscious. When we think thoughts that lend themselves to decisions we are making these decisions in one of two ways, either consciously or unconsciously through our subconscious which usually manifest within our dreams. Consciously we make decisions based on information we are presented with while in an alert and awake state. Unconsciously we are presented with symbolic images that can manifest from condensed sensory experiences and/or displaced emotions that we attach to people, places, and/or things. This theoretical approach to analyzing literature is built on exploring the conscious and subconscious mind of the author to de-fragment who, what, when, where, why, and how the piece of literature was written. Freud's theory believed that authors wrote not only of what they intended to write but also from that with which they did not intend to write. In psychoanalytical thinking is it not so much about solely diving into the part of the author's personality that makes up each character but also asking the reverse of why the character wasn't something/someone else? In other words, it's asking why and then also asking why not. In the story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson one could psychoanalyze why Tessie Hutchinson was picked but also why Mrs. Graves, Mrs. Delacroix, or Mrs. Dunbar weren't picked. It could be analyzed why Tessie Hutchinson, a woman, was picked but also why Mr. Hutchinson wasn't picked or any of the other men in the village. It would be further analyzed why Tessie Hutchinson was the one who showed up late, then if that had any bearing on why she got picked, while also asking had she came on time would she still have been the one to have been picked, or what if she had never shown at all, would she still have been picked. This story has many avenues that can be addressed through the lens of psychoanalysis because the intention was made clear why this act was being done and it was due to tradition which opens a Pandora's box of questions as to the basis of traditions, especially ones that serve no functional purpose (just as one example).

Analyzing John Dos Passos

        John Dos Passos seemed to take the average man and make him something more and then take the man of something more and bring him down to average simply by letting what the press does best, twist words, and then letting the “camera eye” reveal the rest. Take Big Bill Haywood, he was an average man, a man who was not big on feeling like a slave to his employer. That’s why when his first employer, “the farmer”, “lashed him with a whip” Big Bill responded by doing “his first strike” (Bradley, Beatty, Long, 1585). After that he would go on to numerous other jobs, more than 11 not counting his impromptu job of a delivery doctor to the birth of his own child. Then, this average man, full of steam and life, became an “organizer, a speaker, an exhorter, the wants of all the miners were his wants” (Bradley, Beatty, Long, 1586) now and that rose him to “the wants of all the workers…, he was the spokesman of the West, of the cowboys and the lumberjacks and the harvest hands and the miners.” (Bradley, Beatty, Long, 1587) Now this average man had power, with power comes responsibility as well as fringe benefits and expensive perks; perks that sway the responsibility and skew the fine line between right and wrong, leaving Big Bill Haywood to stand trial for the overextension of his power. This then led to jail time and being exiled to Russia where “[h]e died there and they burned his big broken hulk of a body and buried the ashes under the Kremlin wall.” (Bradley, Beatty, Long, 1588).

        Big Bill Haywood wasn’t the only person Dos Passos built up to strip down, or present striped to build up, he did this with many people in the public eye for his U.S.A. Trilogy. He also presented those not in the “newsreel” or “camera eye” he gave a voice to the working man that was never going to amount to anything more than another working man. Dos Passos allowed them to voice their thoughts knowing they had at least him as their audience. So when they said things such as, “it ain’t your fault and it ain’t my fault… it’s poverty, and poverty’s the fault of the system.”, (Passos, 14) they didn’t have to feel uneducated, instead, they could feel empowered by the listening ear. He gave a listening ear that allowed them to continue on with their wobbly thought out strung together thoughts that contained blame and fault instead of hope for change. Thoughts that sounded like this, “It’s the fault of the system that don’t give a man the fruit of his labor… The only man who gets anything out of capitalism is a crook, an’ he gets to be a millionaire in short order…But an honest workin’ man like John or myself we can work a hundred years and not leave enough to bury us decent with.”(Passos, 14-15) Seems like Dos Passos character Tim O’Hara was “tellin’ the truth” (Passos, 15) right? I mean Big Bill Haywood did get to have “champagne cocktails at the Ritz and sleep with Russian countesses in Montmarte” (Bradley, Beatty, Long, 1587) before he died in Russia and it did seem like he did have enough money left over to be burned and buried in a remote foreign land under a landmark too non-the-less. What more could the elite want? It’s a shame Tim only felt “like whipped cur.” (Passos, 15) but still felt the ability to fault poverty itself. It seems, that if he didn’t feel so whipped, he might have been able to take a walk in another man's shoes, however, I believe that was Dos Passos's main point behind his modern style.

        Dos Passos figured out a way to bring the headlines, “newsreels” together, full front, then describe further out through his “camera eye” what those headlines were eluding to, talking about, lending a voice to, damning, criticizing, personifying, glamorizing, and/or glossing over. Then in an "icing the cake" fashion he added in the narrative voices of common folk so that literary’s could pour over its ingenuity of art, school-age children could learn the history and those oblivious to the comings and goings of anything outside their 8x8 comfort zoned box could be introduced to the world should they have the attention span to finish this brilliant piece.



                                                                         Works Cited:

• Passos, John Dos. “The 42nd Parallel .”U.S.A, Random House, 1985, pp. 14– 15. The Modern Library.
• Bradley, Sculley, et al. “Fiction as Social History.”The American Tradition in Literature, 3rd ed., vol. 2, Grosset & Dunlap, 1956, pp. 1585–1588.

A Lit Comparison of William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" and Jean Toomer's "Cane"

        Inside of William Faulkners’s “As I Lay Dying” resides racism of a societal economic stance while Jean Toomer’s “Cane” is home to a racism built up of skin pigmentation. Both derive from fear-based ignorance though one captivates its readers empathetic senses and the other allows its reader to feel the impoverished lifestyle of a dictatorial father. Faulkner introduces his reader to a slave owner that makes slaves out of his own kin; where he never allows one of his own to supersede him in any way, not mentally emotionally or physically. Toomer on the other hand introduces us to several unique and individualistic stories of black slavery that take a poetically empathetic look at the cultural similarities disguised as differences deriving from a fear that what doesn’t look the same can’t possibly be the same. No matter how it is laid out, Faulkner and Toomer both know how to write race-related segregation.

        Faulkner introduces us to the Bundren family who was headed up in theory by their Pa, Anse Bundren, however, in actuality it was headed by their Ma, Addie Bundren. In order to lead, a person must be strong but Anse was not a strong man; he was a weak man who lived off of what his family provided for him. Anse’s way of thinking followed a line that businessmen follow, “Nowhere in this sinful world can an honest, hardworking man profit. It takes them that runs the stores in the towns, doing no sweating, living off of them that sweats.” (735) So, it was Addie who was the strength, she did what she had to for her children, all of her children, even the one she had through deceit, Jewel. Well, sometimes more so for Jewel because Jewel was targeted by Anse. He was a reminder to Anse that at one time Addie was loved by another man. So when Addie wanted to take Jewel to the doctors “pa didn’t want to spend the money without it was needful, and Jewel did seem all right except for his thinness and except for his way of dropping off to sleep at ay moment.” (742) Therefore Addie knew she had to do what needed to be done behind Anse’s back. Darl said, “Addie Bundren should be hiding anything she did, who had tried to teach us that deceit was such that, in a world where it was, nothing else could be very bad or very important, not even poverty.” To Anse, life revolved around money but to Addie life simply revolved regardless of a person’s financial situation. So Anse treated his family like they were employees, giving the feeling of trapped slavery amongst his family. The only way one could escape it was through death, something that Anse repeatedly says throughout the whole story is that he “don’t begrudge her it”. Addie knew better though, she knew that Anse was just full of words, like many other people were. Words were not needed for true feelings, feelings she had with her children, feelings that didn’t need descriptive wording. Only those people, like Anse, like businessmen, like those people who didn’t know of pride and didn’t know of fear, had to make up a word to convey what they thought they felt. Addie knew words such as begrudge and love, that came from Anse were “just a shape to fill a lack” (759) because Anse didn’t know what love was and he did hold a grudge, he held a grudge for anyone who cost him money.

        In Toomer’s “Cane”, contrary to Faulkner’s Bundren family, we have many people from several places all trickling through and around Jean Toomer’s life creating this cast of characters that breathe the desire to stay unequal. It is comfortable to want change but to be faced with it brings about an uncomfortable fear of the unknown. “Fellows about town were all right, but how about his friends up North? He could see them incredible, repulsed. … “… with their eyes still upon him, he began to feel embarrassed. He felt the need of explaining things to the.” (654) He was comfortable with Louisa where they were, sneaking around, but should people that don’t know become in the know, well then, that was a fear that Bob could not repress. It was a fear that made him question the whole pigmentation difference on his walk to see her, on his walk to ‘love her’. “Bob Stone, of the old Stone family, in a scrap with a nigger over a nigger girl.” (654) Bob Stone, like Anse Bundren, had words because he had ideas about what was right and what was wrong, neither of which he knew anything about. Much like Anse, Bob, didn’t know what love was. So when Bob said that “He was going to see Lousia to-night, and love her.” (654) he was merely creating a shape to fill a lack.

        Also, much like Anse, Bob got other people to do his dirty work for him. Bob was a businessman, even if he wasn’t a businessman. He wasn’t a man willing to sweat for anything he wanted and when it came to fighting for Louisa he was incapable of standing up for himself adequately, however, that didn’t matter because “White men like ants upon a forage rushed about. … Shotguns, revolvers, rope, kerosene, torches. … They came together.” (656) In the end, the man Tom, who fought Bob for Louisa, was the one willing to do what he had to do for the person he loved, like Addie had for her children, and died.

        So it would appear that both Faulkner and Toomer know how to write race-related segregation that goes beyond the color spectrum to the fear that lies at the heart of the segregation nightmare. They both seemed to grasp the importance men imagined having in the modernist era with regard to their significant other and when they are brought to the reality that they have less power then they think, they become territorial and dictatorial in their stance in life. Those around them can not become more superior to them. They will hold grudges and they will use words to fill what they are lacking.



                                                                         Works Cited:

• Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine.The Norton Anthology of American Literature. D, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2012. Page. 735,742,759,654,656.