History YMMV / TheLottery

** When the Hutchinson family is chosen, Tessie tries to put forth her eldest daughter and son-in-law to be included. Was she just trying to save herself, or was it also an attempt to protect her three younger children, one of whom is a toddler?

** When the Hutchinson family is chosen, Tessie tries to put forth her eldest daughter and son-in-law to be included. Was she just trying to save herself, or was it also an attempt to protect her younger children?

* NotSoCrazyAnymore: The story was written in 1948—15 years before the murder of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese Kitty Genovese]] and the coining of the "bystander effect," the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_Experiment Stanley Milgram obedience experiment]], and Hannah Arendt's book on the Nazis' "banality of evil." Jackson was impressively ahead of her time for writing about a group of ordinary citizens who commit murder once a year for no reasons except [[PeerPressureMakesYouEvil peer pressure]] and [[CultureJustifiesAnything tradition]].

** The lottery's ultimate victim is a murdered innocent... who, one hour ago, had no problem with the Lottery itself and undoubtedly had participated in many over the course of her life. Should the reader pity her, or should they see it as the consequences of being ''complicit'' in a corrupt system?

* ItWasHisSled: Is there anyone who's been in American high school that ''doesn't'' know what the titular Lottery turns out to be? (Note that this isn't the case in other countries, where the short story is much less well-known.)

* MisaimedFandom: While many readers were outraged by the story, others wrote to Jackson assuming the Lottery was a real custom and asking where they could see one. Jackson wasn't pleased by this.

** When her family is chosen to put up a member for sacrifice, a woman's immediate instinct is to try to drag her daughter and son-in-law into the drawing in hopes that they might be killed instead of her. The daughter's last memory of Tessie (besides the stones) will be that she tried to get ''her'' murdered so she could live another year.
* NotSoCrazyAnymore: The story was written in 1948—15 years before the murder of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese Kitty Genovese]] and the coining of the "bystander effect," the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_Experiment Stanley Milgram obedience experiment]], and Hannah Arendt's book on the Nazis' "banality of evil." Jackson was impressively ahead of her time for writing about a group of average, ordinary citizens who commit murder once a year purely because of [[PeerPressureMakesYouEvil peer pressure]] and [[CultureJustifiesAnything tradition]].

* ItWasHisSled: Is there anyone who's been in American high school that ''doesn't'' know what the titular lottery turns out to be? (Note that this isn't the case in other countries, where the short story is much less well-known.)
* JerkassWoobie: Tessie Hutchinson doesn't protest the lottery until it becomes clear that ''she's'' in danger. She even tries to put her daughter at risk to give herself better odds. It's easy to pity her, though, since she's an innocent victim of chance -- plus she [[CruelAndUnusualDeath dies by being stoned to death]]. (It's not clear whether the townspeople throw the rocks at her or actually go up and ''beat her to death'' with them).

* NotSoCrazyAnymore: The story was written in 1948—15 years before the murder of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese Kitty Genovese]] and the coining of the "bystander effect," the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_Experiment Stanley Milgram obedience experiment]], and Hannah Arendt's book on the Nazis' "banality of evil." Jackson was impressively ahead of her time for writing about a group of average, ordinary citizens who commit murder once a year purely because of [[PeerPressureMakesYouEvil peer pressure]] and [[CultureJustifiesAnything tradition]].

* IdiotPlot: The series starts with Dr. Alison Lennon successfully creating 100 fertilized embryos for the first time in ten years. She tells the government that she isn't entirely sure how it happened and more research needs to be done. The government fires her under suspicious circumstances, which starts her on a long path of distrusting the government and finding ways to subvert them. After a whole bunch of drama (and even water torture), the government decides to hire her back ''the very next episode'' and force her to...continue the very research she was planning on doing anyway. Seriously, all the subversive things that she does in every episode that follows wouldn't have happened had the government not decided to fire her and then forcibly rehire her a few days later.

* NotSoCrazyAnymore: The story was written in 1948—15 years before the murder of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese Kitty Genovese]] and the coining of the "bystander effect," the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_Experiment Stanley Milgram obedience experiment]], and Hannah Arendt's book on the Nazis' "banality of evil." Jackson was impressively ahead of her time for writing about a group of average, ordinary citizens who commit murder once a year because of [[PeerPressureMakesYouEvil peer pressure]] and tradition.