Islam in Shirley Jackson's the Lottery/L'ISLAM DANS LA LOTERIE DE SHIRLEY JACKSON
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract: This paper examines a cross-cultural concern in Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, underlining the story's striking allusions to Islam which can be categorically seen in the following five aspects: the symbolic black-box, stoning, the status of women, the fixed annual date(s) of the lottery, and the act of calling the participants in the lottery five times (calls), in addition to further points regarding characterization and scapegoat. turns out that The Lottery is a carefully-woven complexity of symbols allegorizing Islam. Above all, Jackson's symbolic black box shares a great deal of the distinctions of the Ka'ba and the Black Stone and the ancient she recruits echoes the two aspects of stoning in Islamic Hajj and Islam's penal law regarding adultery. Besides, the annual dates of the lottery reflect on annual rituals in Islam, with additional significance of the twenty-seventh (and twenty-sixth) day of the month. Further, the status of Jackson's women perhaps alludes to propaganda-views of women's secondary position in Islam, and the story possibly points to Islamic prayer. Nonetheless, the allegory of Islam in The Lottery seems to reflect Jackson's vague, confused, superficial, and stereotypical perception of Islam and Islamic rituals. Key words: Shirley Jackson; The Lottery; Islam; Symbolism; allusion; cross-cultural stereotypes Resume: Cet article examine une preoccupation interculturelle dans La Loterie de Shirley Jackson, en soulignant les allusions frappantes de l'histoire vis-a-vis de l'Islam qui peut etre categoriquement vu dans les cinq aspects suivants: la symbolique «boite noire», la lapidation, le statut des femmes, la date annuelle fixe de la loterie et l'acte d'appeler cinq fois les participants a la loterie (appels), en plus des points supplementaires concernant la caracterisation et la designation de boucs emissaires. Il s'avere que La Loterie est une complexite soigneusement tissee de symboles allegorisant l'Islam. Surtout, la boite symbolique se refere aux caracteristiques de la Ka'ba, et les termes de la pierre noire et du rite antique brutal qu'elle utilise renvoient aux deux aspects de la lapidation du Hajj islamique et au droit penal islamique concernant l'adultere.En outre, la date annuelle de la loterie reflete les rites annuels dans l'Islam, avec une signification additionnelle de la vingt-septieme (et vingt-sixieme) jour du mois.De plus, le statut de la femme de Jackson fait allusion peut-etre a la vue propagande de la position secondaire des femmes dans l'Islam, et l'histoire pointe peut-etre sur la priere islamique.Neanmoins, l'allegorie de l'Islam dans La Loterie semble reflete une conception vague, confuse, superficielle et stereotypee de Jackson sur l'Islam et sur des rituels islamiques. Mots-Cles: Shirley Jackson; La Loterie; Islam; symbolisme; allusion; intercultural; stereotypes It isn't fair, it isn't right Mrs. Hutchinson cries in The Lottery (254), Shirley Jackson's much phrased story, mostly anthologized as an example of and exercise into reading and decoding symbolism in literature. A shocking narrative about scapegoat, The Lottery is built on a narrative structure that makes the reader share in the criminal act, for it is too late in the story when the reader does realize that the winner of the lottery will be stoned to death.2 As such, it is not surprising that when the story was published in The New Yorker in 1948, a significant date indeed, it was with public outrage, whereby people wanted Jackson to frankly reveal her intention behind writing the story. American readers felt antagonized by the narrative and demanded clarification from the author. In her biography of Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman reported that when the story was published no New Yorker story had ever received a similar response by readers, hundreds of whom sent letters that were marred by bewilderment, speculation, and old-fashioned abuse (Friedman 63). …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".