Anne Frank Diary of a Young Girl: an extraordinary document of adolescence.

This Book is Banned_ Cover of first U.S. edition

This Book is Banned_Scarlet Alphabet -Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl is a classic work of Holocaust literature. But it’s also the coming or age story of a young girl, albeit in extraordinary circumstances. This aspect of this book is often forgotten, despite the statement on the original cover describing it as  an extraordinary document of adolescence.

While the term “diary” suggests raw, unedited writing, Diary of a Young Girl is an amalgamation of literary processes. And, it’s been translated into more than 70 languages, to become one of the most read books in the world.[1]

Anne Frank requested a diary for her thirteenth birthday. And it was one of the first things she packed when her family went into hiding two weeks later, on July 6, 1942.[2] Most people assume this single diary is all that exists of Anne’s writings, but it isn’t. She also wrote in notebooks she’d receive from her sister Margot and those helping to hide the family.  And these writings are included in what became the book Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.

But that isn’t the only version of Anne Frank’s diary that has been published. Anne hoped to one day become a journalist, or famous writer.[3] And she was inspired to publish a book after the war about her time in the Secret Annex by an address on the radio from Gerrit Bolkestein, Education, Cultural Affairs and Science Minister of the Dutch government, in exile in London.

Bolkestein urged the Dutch people to collect “vast quantities of simple, everyday material…[4]

This Book is Banned_Scarlet Alphabet

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History cannot be written on the basis of official decisions and documents alone.[5]

If future generations are to realize to the full extent what we as a population are going through and what we are experiencing in this time of war, then it is clear that we will need simple documents: a diary, letters from a laborer forced to go to work in Germany, […] sermons spoken by a clergyman...[6]

Only with such writings could the “picture of Holland’s struggle for freedom be painted in its full depth and full glory.”[7]

Anne already had her title: Het Achterhuis, or The Secret Annex. She revised a large part of her diary, describing the period from June 12, 1942 to March 29, 1944. But the second draft of her revise omitted a couple of things. She eliminated notes about her crush on Peter van Pels, son of the family who shared their hiding place. And, she deleted irascible remarks about her mother, those typical of a thirteen-year-old.[8]

Cover of Het-Achterhuis

Anne’s father, Otto Frank, was the driving force behind the publication of her diary, which was first published in book form as Het Achterhuis on June 25, 1947.[9] He didn’t simply publish Anne’s revised version, however. Otto reinserted some of the passages from Anne’s original diary texts that she omitted in her rewrite. He also included some of Anne’s short stories. Otto also corrected the language errors in young Anne’s writing.[10]

After Het Achterhuis’ success in the Netherlands, Otto looked for publishing opportunities in other countries.  In 1950, a French edition was published, followed by one in German. And in 1952, two English versions were published under the title Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, one for Great Britain and the other for the U.S. which included an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt.[11]

Otto Frank willed the original documents to the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation.[12] And in 1986, the Institute produced a “Critical Edition” of the “Diary.” Intended for academic research, this edition draws a meticulously detailed comparison between Anne’s original diary texts, her rewritten version, and Otto’s rendition. It also includes exhaustive scientific examinations of the original documents confirming that this is indeed the work of a girl named Anne Frank.[13]

This Book is Banned_cover of The Definitive Edition

In 1995, The Definitive Edition was published in English. This edition contains 30% more material than the original edition, including much of the previously omitted sexual content. The additional material includes passages revolving around menstruation and sexual organs, as well as mentions of contraception. Not surprisingly, this version is the one most often banned and challenged.[14]

Most notable challenges include one in 2010, when a parent in the Culpepper County Public School district in Virginia complained that the book contained “explicit material and homosexual themes.”[15] The school district ultimately kept this edition of the book in its library. But, the curriculum was changed to use an earlier version of the work.

And in 2013, a formal complaint was filed by a Michigan parent, calling the book “pornographic.” They also characterized it as “too explicit for middle-schoolers,” clearly losing sight of the fact that it was written by a middle-school-aged author.[16] In fact, the cover of the original edition describes the book as “an extraordinary document of adolescence.” Unfortunately, many parents have forgotten what concepts, issues, and questions they were working through when they were thirteen.
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Technically speaking this doesn’t qualify as a new edition, but in 2018 researchers announced they uncovered the text beneath two pages of the diary Anne had pasted over with brown paper.[17] Due to advances in image processing technology, The Anne Frank House, together with the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, as well as the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, were able to decipher the text on the hidden pages.[18

The content of the text, bawdy jokes and Anne’s version of material that approximates the sex education of the day, isn’t significant in itself. She explores such topics in other parts of the diary – very often in more explicit terms than they’re addressed here. As Peter de Bruijn, a senior researcher at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands maintains, they’re important because they indicate Frank’s first foray into writing in a more literary tone.[19]

This Book is Banned_Anne Frank's Diary the Graphic Adaptation_cover

Finally, there’s Anne Frank’s Diary the Graphic Adaptation, published in 2018. As the title explicitly states, this book is not a new edition, but an adaptation. That said, this telling of Anne Frank’s story is faithful to the Definitive Edition, and has been authorized by the Anne Frank Foundation in Basel.[20]

Anne Frank’s Diary the Graphic Adaptation has been making headlines lately for being yanked from school curriculums, most recently in Florida and Texas. Why was this version of Anne Frank’s diary banned? Like challenges revolving around The Definitive Edition, it’s been challenged for sexual content, and labeled “pornography.”[21]

The Anne Frank House even felt compelled to issue a statement on the recent firing of a schoolteacher in Texas for reading a passage in class. Understandably, it’s pointed out that this turn of events is not about Anne Frank’s diary itself, but an illustrated adaptation of her diary. Be that as it may, the Anne Frank House’s response is right on target:

This Book is Banned_Scarlet Alphabet

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According to the school, the passages about Anne Frank’s development from girlhood to womanhood and her curiosity about her sexuality are offensive. 

As a 13-year-old girl, Anne Frank had to go into hiding from the Nazis. For two years she wrote in her diary about her life, feelings and thoughts from her hiding place, the Secret Annex, against the background of the persecution of the Jews. She also wrote about her development as a woman and her ambition to become a writer. She did this in a frank manner. Anne Frank’s diary appeals to people worldwide.

Graphic biographies or novels are very suitable for reaching young people. Banning books, in this case the graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary, because of certain passages is a missed opportunity to introduce young people to Anne Frank’s life story and the history of the Holocaust.[22]

On one level, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl is nothing less than an iconic piece of Holocaust literature. On the other hand, it’s the story of a thirteen-year-old girl coming of age, albeit in extraordinary circumstances.

This combination of historical significance, and insight into the personal development of a young girl into womanhood makes this work doubly relevant. Because as Minister Bolkestein astutely pointed out, history is about more than official decisions and documents. It’s about people, and what they were experiencing during the period in question. If we’re going to truly understand it… that is.

#Banned Books     #Holocaust       #Celebrations     #published 1950s         #graphic novels

Endnotes:

[1] “The Diary.” Anne Frank.org  https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/diary/

[2] Müller, Melissa. Anne Frank: the biography. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Pg 190.

[3 The Diary.” Anne Frank.org. https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/diary/

[4 Pampl, Patricia. “The Whole Anne Frank. March 5, 1995. The New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/26/reviews/frank-definitive.html?mabReward=relbias&module=Search

[5] Pampl, Patricia. “The Whole Anne Frank. March 5, 1995. The New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/26/reviews/frank-definitive.html?mabReward=relbias&module=Search

[6] War Diaries > Historical background. The Memory  https://geheugen.delpher.nl/en/geheugen/pages/collectie/Oorlogsdagboeken/Historische+achtergrond

[7] Müller, Melissa. Anne Frank: the biography. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Pg 226.

[8] “The Diary.” Anne Frank House.org. https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/diary/

[9] “The Diary.” Anne Frank.org. https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/diary/initial-reactions-secret-annex/

Noonan, John. “On This Day: Anne Frank’s Diary Published.” Finding Dulcinea. https://www.findingdulcinea.com/on-this-day-anne-franks-diary-published/

[10] “The Complete Works of Anne Frank.” Anne Frank House.org  https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/diary/complete-works-anne-frank/

[11] “The Publication of the Diary.” Anne Frank.org  https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/diary/publication-diary/

Tikkanen, Amy. “The Diary of a Young Girl.” Britannica.com  https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Diary-of-a-Young-Girl

[12]   Lee, Carol Ann. The Biography of Anne Frank –  Roses From the Earth. London: Viking, 2000.     Pg 233.

[13] Pampl, Patricia. “The Whole Anne Frank. March 5, 1995. The New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/26/reviews/frank-definitive.html?mabReward=relbias&module=Search

[14] Culker, Emily. “Happy Birthday, Anne Frank.” Intellectual Freedom Blog. June 12, 2022. https://www.oif.ala.org/happy-birthday-anne-frank-2/

[15] Chandler, Michael Alison. “School system in Virginia won’t teacher version of Anne Frank book.” January 29, 2010. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/28/AR2010012804001.html?nav%3Dhcmodule

[16] Culker, Emily. “Happy Birthday, Anne Frank.” Intellectual Freedom Blog. June 12, 2022. https://www.oif.ala.org/happy-birthday-anne-frank-2/

[17] Siegal, Nina. “Researchers Uncover Two Hidden Pages in Anne Frank’s Diary.” May 15, 2018. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/books/anne-frank-diary-new-pages.html

[18] “New texts from diary of Anne Frank revealed.” The Anne Frank House. https://www.annefrank.org/en/about-us/news-and-press/news/2018/5/15/new-texts-diary-anne-frank-revealed/

[19] Siegal, Nina. “Researchers Uncover Two Hidden Pages in Anne Frank’s Diary.” May 15, 2018. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/books/anne-frank-diary-new-pages.html

[20] The Jewish Museum Shop. https://shop.thejewishmuseum.org/anne-frank-s-diary

[21] Lapin, Andrew. “A new version of the famous Holocaust diary is being called ‘Anne Frank pornography’ and getting banned from schools.” June 23, 2023.  Heritage Florida Jewish News. https://www.heritagefl.com/story/2023/06/23/news/a-new-version-of-the-famous-holocaust-diary-is-being-called-anne-frank-pornography-and-getting-banned-from-schools/18397.html

Bella, Timothy. “Texas teacher fired after assigning graphic novel based on Anne Frank’s diary.” September 21, 2023. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/20/texas-teacher-anne-frank-fired/

[22] “Statement: banning of Anne Frank graphic adaption in Texas.” The Anne Frank House. https://www.annefrank.org/en/about-us/news-and-press/news/2023/9/21/banning-anne-frank-graphic-adaption-texas/

Images:

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Cover of first English edition. Doubleday & Company Inc published the First Edition, First Printing in Garden City, New York, 1952.

Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex) – Front cover. First edition, 1947.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. The Definitive Edition. Cover. New York: Bantam, 1997.

Anne Frank’s red checked diary. The Anne Frank House. A_AFrank_I_039
https://www.annefrank.org/en/museum/anne-frank-collection/35/red-checked-diary/

Anne Frank’s Diary the Graphic Adaptation. Cover. New York: Pantheon Books, 2018




Maus: Why it Should be Unbanned.

Maus was banned

.ews about the McMinn County School Board’s unanimous decision to strike Maus from its curriculum made national headlines. Not only was Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work the anchor text for a module on the Holocaust – it is shockingly ironic that the decision to remove it was rendered as the world prepared for International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Spiegelman’s response to this turn of events?  The board’s decision is “not good for their children, even if they think it is.”[1] And Professor Brett Ashley Kaplan is here to tell us why. The following essay by Dr. Kaplan also addresses why the banning of Maus and other books under threat, should be reversed.

I’m a Professor at the University of Illinois and Director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies who has taught both Toni Morrison’s brilliant novel Beloved and Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus multiple times.

It is no accident that both of these superb books are banned or under threat of banning at this fraught historical moment where we witness an aggressive, terrifying, and unwelcome rise in white supremacy. Beloved and Maus threaten the right because they are both complex narratives that invite readers who have not themselves been slaves or who have not themselves survived the Holocaust to glimpse these traumatic histories and experiences.

Neither book flattens or sugarcoats its realities. Both have gone a long way in provoking empathy.

And this will not do for those who wish to push a white supremacist agenda. Empathy, radical care for an other, being invited to see inside an other’s story are very scary emotions for racists and anti-Semites because that very empathy blocks hatred.

Why do I choose to teach both of these books? Because it is through carefully crafted art that we can begin to see others. And when we do that, we are less likely to cause harm, more likely to care.

When I last taught Beloved, the students learned so much: Margaret Garner, the historical model for Morrison’s main character, in 1856 faced a truly terrible choice. She faced what Holocaust survivors have come to call a choiceless choice. Rather than allow her daughter to be returned to slavery she took her life. It’s an unimaginably painful choice for a mother to make. There is no stronger way to grasp the horror of slavery than to understand that Margaret Garner made this choiceless choice. My students learn this. They also learn something about writing from the person I consider to be the best American writer of the twentieth century. Reading Beloved, my students tell me, changed their lives. Some of my students are the descendants of slaves, others are not. But they were able to see how haunting works, to understand that this legacy is still very much alive for the characters, is still very much alive for us, no matter what our identities.

This is why the brilliant 1619 project also felt threatening, and why critical race theory scares. I plan to teach the 1619 project and critical race theory because these, too, teach empathy.

There is no question that Maus is a watershed moment for many of my students. Art Spiegelman wrote Maus from his own memories of his family’s story of trauma, resilience, survival, and death. It’s not a simple narrative. Rendered in graphic memoir form that many undergraduates immediately gravitate towards, it conveys all the complexity of inheriting traumatic memories, all the love for a troubled father, all the ways in which Holocaust survivors both demonstrate their capacity to move beyond the worst and, at the same time and in tension with this, carry like burning coals memories that are so beyond what those of us who sleep in comfortable beds, can expect to eat food every day, and have never been hunted as though we were animals can ever understand. Maus has proven to be a beautiful, difficult portal into Holocaust history that has transformed the understanding of this awful past for so many students, in so many places. Maus has also transformed the graphic novel and graphic memoir, opening pathways for many other voices to gain a wider audience and be seen, heard, and cared for. In response to the McMinn County school board’s decision to ban Maus, I am adding Maus to my fall syllabus. This banning is censorship that smacks of the exact same modes of thought control that enabled the Nazi genocide.

The banning of Maus and threats against Beloved must be reversed so that democracy can thrive. I believe that the McMinn County School Board are resilient enough to recognize that they have made a mistake.

Please note:  This essay first appeared in the Feb. 3, 2022 edition of The News Gazette in Champaign, Illinois.

Plus, be sure to check out Professor Kaplan on Illinois Public Media’s The 21st Show, where they discuss the question of “What’s behind the recent wave of censorship in schools?”

Essayist bio:

Dr. KaplanBrett Ashley Kaplan Directs the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies at the University of Illinois where she is a professor of Comparative and World Literature and Director of Graduate Studies. She publishes in Haaretz, The ConversationSalon.com (picked up from Conversation), AsitoughttobemagazineAJS PerspectivesContemporary LiteratureEdge Effectsand The Jewish Review of Books. She has been interviewed on NPR, the AJS Podcast, and The 21st, and is the author of Unwanted Beauty, Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory, and Jewish Anxiety and the Novels of Philip Roth. Her novel, Rare Stuff, is due out in June 2022 brettashleykaplan.com.

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#On Censorship      #Banned       #Guest Essayists       #graphic novels        #holocaust

[1] Hernandez, Joe. “Art Spiegelman decries Tennessee school board for removing ‘Maus’ from its curriculum.”
https://www.wbur.org/npr/1076180329/tennessee-school-district-ban-holocaust-graphic-novel-maus




The Lottery: Who’s the Lucky Scapegoat?

Shirley Jackson's Lottery banned

he idea for The Lottery popped into Shirley Jackson’s head on the way home from the market, as she pushed her daughter up the hill in the stroller that also held the day’s groceries. The narrative was fairly clear in her mind, and once she got home putting it on paper went “quickly and easily, moving from beginning to end without pause.”[1]

Jackson’s story seems to have been inspired by a typical, “all-American,” domestic situation. A mother and her young child making preparations for the family’s evening meal – what could be more benevolent than that? So, what made such a story so controversial? Why was The Lottery banned?

The story Jackson wrote that afternoon ends with a famously shocking plot twist, one that provoked controversy the instant it appeared in The New YorkerThe Lottery has been described as a story that “demands a reaction from its reader,” and boy, did readers react![2] Hundreds cancelled their subscriptions.[3] Many of them took Jackson’s story for a factual report. And vehement letters addressed directly to Jackson filled the mailroom, describing her story as “perverted,” “horrible and gruesome,” not to mention “in incredibly bad taste.”[4]

Reasons why The Lottery is routinely banned by public schools fall along similar lines. Jackson’s work was challenged at the Salem-Keizer School District in Oregon for its depiction of “morbid and grotesque ideas.”[5] It was challenged in Webster City, Iowa for being “like Friday the 13th.” The school administrator specifically took offense to the story’s insinuation “that a child is stoning a parent.”[6]

Those who set out to ban The Lottery from school curriculums saw it as an attack on the family by way of undermined traditions. Challengers interviewed for an article in the journal Social Education expressed concern that reading Jackson’s story causes students “to question their values, traditions, and religious beliefs.”[7] And that instilling these thoughts in young readers’ minds is a subtle means of destroying the family unit.

These challengers may not be taking The Lottery as factual reporting, the way many who cancelled their New Yorker subscriptions did. But like those disgruntled subscribers, their objections are the result of a shallow, deficient interpretation of Jackson’s iconic story, of not thinking past the narrative much less their noses.

Though challengers’ observation about The Lottery questioning tradition isn’t inaccurate, it is terribly misguided. The point Jackson makes is more nuanced, and significantly more profound than a call to spit in the eye of tradition out of sheer defiance. The real question here is not, “how could she?!” but “why does Jackson advocate questioning tradition?” And no… it isn’t a devious plan to destroy the American family.
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Shirley Jackson's Lottery banned

Shirley Jackson’s Raw Materials.

 Who knows what was going through Shirley Jackson’s head as she walked home from the market, just before she put her daughter Joanne in the playpen, the frozen vegetables in the freezer, and The Lottery down on paper. What was so compelling that the story flowed “quickly and easily, moving from beginning to end without pause?”[8]

It might have been the feeling of being a “frozen out” faculty wife by the townspeople where she lived, or the painful awareness of anti-Semitism Jackson had acquired from personal experience.[9] Perhaps it was the anthropology book her husband recently brought home, or the witchcraft she’d been interested in since college. Maybe the motivating factor was world events, the disturbing revelations about  the Holocaust that emerged from the Nuremberg trials just a couple years earlier.[10] These were the raw materials that went into the making of The Lottery, to be sure. And they most certainly inform the shape the work takes. But what must have really been on Jackson’s mind as this story poured forth, was the notion that ordinary people are capable of horrific acts. She as much as says so in the San Francisco Chronicle:

I suppose I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village, to shock the story’s readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.[11]

And shock them she did. Significantly, Jackson’s story came out while American citizens were still trying to process the distressing reports about the Nazis’ persecution of Europe’s Jews, Romani people, and other victims. Many Americans were confidently insisting that nothing like that could ever happen here. Then along comes The Lottery, with a disturbing ending that blows a hole in American complacency – straight into the mailboxes of The New Yorker subscribers, no less.[12]

The juxtaposition of ritual murder with modern small-town America is pretty jarring. Especially when the ritual murder is carried out by stoning. As noted, this narrative certainly packs an emotional wallop. And when read for more than plot, when attention is paid to The Lottery’s structure and the symbolism Jackson employs, we see a summary of humankind’s savage past, as well as what her husband referred to as an “anatomy of our times.”[13] And what becomes clear is that humanity is not at the mercy of a “murky, savage id.”[14] No, we are the victim of an unexamined culture and unchanging traditions which, like the lottery in Jackson’s story, actually engenders a cruelty not rooted in our inherent makeup. [15] That is Jackson’s message. It’s also the very real horror within The Lottery.
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What Does the Three-Legged Stool Symbolize?

The obvious similarity between the village’s lottery and scapegoat traditions has been pointed out on many occasions. And this parallel gives us insight into the symbolic nature of the three-legged stool that’s placed in the center of the village square. Significantly, it is on this stool that the “the black wooden box,” the mechanism for conducting the lottery, rests.[16] The three-legged stool embodies examples of scapegoating, the raw materials mentioned above that inform The Lottery and its symbolism. One leg stands for the ancient scapegoat ritual itself, which Jackson had become familiar with through the anthropology book her husband brought home. Another leg signifies the Salem Witch Trials, made all the more relevant given her interest in witchcraft and magic. And the third leg represents the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust, still fresh in the minds of the entire world.
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Shirley Jackson's Lottery banned

What are the Origins of Scapegoating?

At its root, the scapegoat tradition is about purging evil, clearing out the ills that have been plaguing the community that is performing the rite. And the scapegoat is literally the vehicle for carrying this evil away. Scapegoating rituals can be found in many cultures, but the term comes from a rite in the biblical book of Leviticus. As in The Lottery, the sacrifice is chosen by lots, in this case a goat. The animal is symbolically marked with the inequities of the people and sent off into the wilderness. Hence, “(e)scape” goat. The goat doesn’t get too far, though, because it’s someone’s job to follow him and drive him off a cliff – backwards. The poor guy never sees it coming. The goat is clearly destroyed, and with it, the evil he was carrying.[17]

But not all scapegoats are goats. In some cultures, they’re human. When it comes to human sacrifice, the first civilization that comes to mind is probably the Aztecs, but they’re certainly not the only ones. Accounts exist from around the world and across the ages, from Ancient Greece to as late as the nineteenth century in the Pacific Islands.[18]  Whatever shape the scapegoat takes, the “general clearance of evil” described above (the purpose most often associated with the scapegoat tradition), occurred periodically. For agrarian cultures, that was typically at a time that coincided with planting or harvest.[19] Though June 27th doesn’t strictly align with either of those agricultural events, Mr. Warner’s maxim “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon” is clearly a nod in that direction.[20]

Though the practice of sacrificing human scapegoats is no longer ritualized, that doesn’t mean it no longer happens. The witchcraft hysteria that continues to inform New England culture, and the Salem Witch Trials specifically, are nothing if not scapegoating. Women labeled as witches (the operative word being labeled), were executed in order to purge their village of Satanic influence. And the Nazi’s effort to purify Germany by “exterminating” Jews, the Romani people and other groups, is scapegoating by industrial means. These are certainly not the only examples of human scapegoating that have taken place after the Age of Enlightenment, but they are the ones that inform The Lottery.
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Shirley Jackson's Lottery banned

Scapegoating in the Salem Witch Trials.

Jackson never explicitly tells the reader where the lottery takes place. And there’s a reason for that. If she did, her story would no longer be about “anytown America.” But the clues she gives us about the village are important to our understanding of The Lottery beyond simple ambiance. It’s a small farming community of about 300 people. And most of the population has a family name with Anglo-Saxon origins. The last detail Jackson gives us is that the land yields an abundance of stones, a fact critical to the story beyond the obvious reason. These clues suggest that New England is the locale of the story. When taken in total, this information points to the region’s history of witch trials and persecutions, especially when the village’s patriarchal power structure gets thrown into the mix. And the fact that critical scenes in in a young adult book Jackson wrote about witchcraft hysteria (The Witchcraft of Salem Village) parallel scenarios in The Lottery, substantiates an intended allusion to witch trials.[21]

An important parallel between Massachusetts during the witchcraft hysteria and the village where Jackson lived is the power dynamic between genders. In both cases, the targeted women respond to the pressure of male authority by betraying other women. It’s a classic “divide and conquer” scenario. The way this plays out in The Lottery is a testament to how successfully the male-dominated order has been imposed on the village’s women.[22] Tessie’s right when she claims that the lottery wasn’t fair. But not because they didn’t give her husband “enough time to choose.”[23] It wasn’t fair, intentionally or not, because the system was designed from a patriarchal perspective.

So, how does the lottery work? The village’s lottery seems random to all but the most meticulous of readers because, by and large, we still accept being classified by surname (in other words, our father’s name) as the standard. Drawing lots according to the household/ father’s name skews the odds toward “women of a certain age,” especially those with few, or female children. In terms of avoiding the black dot, younger is better because a woman’s children are still at home. Having more children dilutes the possibility of drawing the black dot. And having a lot of boys is better still because they won’t marry out of the family and increase their mother’s risk as she ages. Tessie’s betrayal of her married daughter, by insisting that she take her chances with the Hutchinsons, is born of this inequity.[24]

Our trip through the lottery process in Jackson’s village reveals a parallel between the demographic most at risk in The Lottery, and the women most frequently persecuted as witches. The witch trials of Puritan Massachusetts were founded on a patriarchal interpretation of the myth of Eve and her role in The Fall. A second layer of patriarchal thought deems her, and by extension all women, more susceptible to the demonic than men – at least according to a couple of Dominican inquisitors from 1486. And women labeled as witches (the operative word being labeled), were executed in an effort to purify their village of Satanic influence.

The group most vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft was women between forty and sixty. That’s the same segment of society most likely to draw the black dot in The Lottery. In Puritan Massachusetts, accusations of witchcraft served to crush a particular class of women, insufficiently docile women who failed to fit into their assigned role of submissive helpmeet, those who spoke their minds or attempted to run their own affairs.[25]

So, why was Tessie Hutchinson stoned to death The Lottery? Tessie is precisely this type of woman. She shows up late and must weave her way through the crowd to reach her husband, who had been waiting quite some time for her to arrive. Tessie barks at her husband to “get up there,” when it’s his turn to select a slip of paper from the wooden box.[26]  And she certainly isn’t docile when she shouts and yells, challenging the fairness of the lottery and by extension male authority.

Unfortunately for Tessie, much like the women of Puritan Massachusetts,[27] the other women in the village seem to have internalized the ominous lesson they were intended to learn, which is to keep their places in the established order.[28] For, it’s only women Jackson calls out by name as charging toward Tessie, stones in hand as the story ends.
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Shirley Jackson's Lottery banned

More Scapegoating in the Holocaust.

News from the Nuremberg trials, and revelations about the Holocaust were fresh in everyone’s mind. The horrific stories were more personal for Jackson than many Americans because, as the wife of a Jewish husband, she had first-hand experience with anti-Semitism. And though Jackson consistently refused to give a concise explanation of The Lottery, she did tell a friend that the story has to do with anti-Semitism.[29]

The scapegoating the Nazis employed on this colossal scale was an outcome of the ideological (mis)appropriation of Germany’s mythological heritage. The original concept was grounded in the idea that a proper nation, or Volk, requires a particular holistic unity. This totality must be comprised of a natural environment, a language and history rooted in a deep past and rural population, and the expression of that history in an indigenous mythology. The culture that emerged from this sentiment became radicalized, crystallizing as völkisch nationalism in the first third of the 20th century. [30] Anyone perceived as not fulfilling all aspects of this unity was painted as an enemy. And in an effort to “purify” the Volk, those deemed outsiders were targeted. Though Jews were considered the primary enemy, the Romani people and a number of other groups were also among those who collectively fulfilled the role of scapegoat.[31]

Jackson’s story echoes the reported experience of Holocaust survivors in several respects. Let’s start with the hard truth that children are not exempt in either scenario. Like the little girl who wore the red coat in the film Schindler’s List, Davy Hutchinson is at risk as much as everybody else. And that reality is about as disturbing and heart wrenching as it gets.

But more significant in terms of The Lottery’s narrative and its structure, is the fact that the ritual murder in The Lottery is alluded to, although not seen by the reader. Like the execution of survivors’ family members, the act of stoning in The Lottery isn’t witnessed directly. Consequently, in both instances, the focus becomes the very personal experience of the selection process, which needless to say determines between “death or reprieve.”[32] Which is why everyone sighs when little Davy’s paper was blank.

The Lottery’s narrative is the selection process. Jackson’s story is essentially a detailed description of the mechanics of the village’s lottery. And the following high points of that process sound an awful lot like the frequent selections that took place in concentration camps. Flanked by Mr. Graves and Mr. Martin, Mr. Summers declares the lottery open. “A sudden hush fell on the crowd as Mr. Summers cleared this throat and looked at the list. ‘All ready?’ he called.”[33] Once it was determined that this year’s victim would come from the Hutchinson household, each member of the family is called forth as they anxiously draw their individual lots.

This scenario is strikingly similar to the selection process Elie Weisel recounts in Night, the autobiographical account of his experience in both Auschwitz and Buchenwald:

 Three SS officers surrounded the notorious Dr. Mengele, the very same who had received us in Birkenau. The Blockälteste [barracks leader] attempted a smile. He asked us: “Ready?” Yes, we were ready. So were the SS doctors. Dr. Mengele was holding a list: our numbers. He nodded to the Blockälteste: we can begin! As if this were a game… I had one thought: not to have my number taken down and not to show my left arm.[34]

There are enough accounts of the numerous and varied atrocities visited upon the people that comprise the Nazis’ collective scapegoat to fill a library, and they have. Yet, Weisel’s testimony to what occurred in the camps makes it clear that the most terrible word, the one feared more than any other, was selection.[35] Jackson’s villagers must feel the same way about the term lottery.
_________

Shirley Jackson's Lottery banned

The Lottery’s Deteriorating Ritual.

Jackson points out that the original box the villagers used for the lottery had been “lost long ago.” The fact that it was lost, rather than destroyed by termites for example or burned in a barn fire, suggests that over time the villagers have been turning away from the antiquated pagan beliefs this ritual is clearly grounded in. There was once a ritual salute. The lottery official no longer stands “just so.” He doesn’t sing the “tuneless chant” anymore.[36] And at one time there might have been something about him walking among the people… maybe. But these days, the lottery is something to be rushed through so everyone can “get home for noon dinner.”

This evolution of the village’s ritual reveals that the appearance of progress in society is an illusion. Letting go of antiquated pagan beliefs makes it appear that the people in the village have become more enlightened. But, they haven’t. As Jackson put it, “although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.”[37] The point being, though the villagers have let go of most aspects of this pagan ritual they are not actually more civilized. The brutality at its core remains fully intact. And to drive that point home, what the tradition has evolved into, is simply an excuse for violence.

The most damning thing about this situation is that collectively, the townspeople could bring the lottery to an end. But, like the citizens of Salem who get drawn into the cycle of accusation rather than question church tradition, they don’t. They perpetuate this annual murder by teaching it to the younger generations. Someone not only helps Davy Hutchinson draw his slip of paper, they place stones in his little hand. And they do so simply for the sake of upholding tradition. We know this is the only motivation for continuing the lottery, because Old Man Warner’s only response to Mrs. Adams’ suggestion to give it up is nothing more substantial than, “there’s always been a lottery.”[38]
_________

In Conclusion

It’s no accident that Jackson chose stoning rather than a modern, mechanized method of ritual murder à la Nazi Germany, or the hanging employed in The Salem Witch Trials for that matter. She elected to use stoning, because pelting someone to death with rocks is as primitive as it gets. The symbolism is double-edged. Stoning not only speaks to the antiquity of the scapegoat tradition, most importantly it’s a statement about the current state of humanity. Jackson’s choice of stoning is her not too subtle way of saying we’re just as savage as we ever were.

Jackson paints a pretty dismal picture. She seems to be saying that these villagers (and by that she means the whole of humankind) will never be free of their primitive nature. At least, not until enough of them have been affected adversely enough by the horror of their tradition that they reject it and, as Mrs. Adams implies, destroy the box altogether. Or they fashion a new box, one that reflects their current social conditions and sustains them rather than pitting them against each other.[39] Until that happens, Tessie Hutchinson may be the only loser, but no one is a winner.

That’s my take on Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery what’s yours?
Check out this Discussion Guide to get you started.

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Endnotes:

[1] Jackson, Shirley. “Biography of a Story.” Shirley Jackson: Novels & Stories. Edited by Joyce Carol Oates. (New York: Library of America, 2010), 787.
[2] Gahr, Elton. “Criticism of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson: Reactions upon the Initial Publication & Today.” Bright Hub Education.com August 31, 2011; Jackson, “Biography of a Story;” Cohen, Gustavo Vargas. Shirley Jackson’s Legacy: A Critical Commentary on the Literary Reception. Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. July 2012, 17.
[3] Jackson, “Biography of a Story;” Cohen Shirley Jackson’s Legacy, 17.
[4] Jackson, “Biography of a Story,” 797, 799, 797.
[5] ACLU-or.org Oregon Library School Challenges 1979-July 2015.
[6] Brown, Jean E., Ed. SLATE on Intellectual Freedom. (Urbana Ill: National Council of Teachers of English,1994), 24.
[7] Brown, Bill, et al. “The Censoring of “The Lottery.’” The English Journal. Feb., 1986, Vol. 75, No. 2.
[8] Jackson, Shirley. “Biography of a Story.” Shirley Jackson: Novels & Stories. Edited by Joyce Carol Oates. (New York: Library of America, 2010), 787; Franklin, Ruth. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2016), 222.
[9] Heller, Zoe. “The Haunted Mind of Shirley Jackson.” The New Yorker. October 17, 2016; Oppenheimer, Judy. “The Haunting of Shirley Jackson.” The New York Times. July 3, 1988.
[10] Franklin, Ruth. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2016), 221, 217, 234; Hyman, Stanley Edgar. “Preface,” The Magic of Shirley Jackson, by Shirley Jackson (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965), ix.
[11] Franklin, Ruth. “The Lottery Letters.” The New Yorker. June 25, 2013.
[12] Bogert, Edna. “Censorship and ‘The Lottery.’” The English Journal. Vol. 74, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), 47; Yarmove, Jay A. “Jackson’s ‘The Lottery.’” The Explicator. Vol. 52, Issue 4. *Summer, 1994), 242-245.
[13] Hyman The Magic of Shirley Jackson, ix.
[14] Nebeker, Helen E. “’The Lottery’ Symbolic Tour de Force.” American Literature. (Mar. 1974, Vol. 46. No. 1), 100-102
[15] Nebeker, “’The Lottery’ Symbolic Tour de Force.” 101-102.
[16] Nebeker “’The Lottery’ Symbolic Tour de Force.” 103; Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” The New Yorker. June 26, 1948.
[17] Cooper, Howard. “Some Thoughts on ‘Scapegoating’ and its origins in Leviticus 16.” European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe. Vol. 41, No. 2 (Autumn 2008).
[18] Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. (New York: MacMIllan Company, 1925), 579; martin, John. An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands. (London: John Murray, 1817), 229.
[19] Frazer The Golden Bough, 575.
[20] Jackson The Lottery.
[21] Oehlschlaeger, Fritz. “The Stoning of Mistress Hutchinson: Meaning and Context in ‘The Lottery.’” Essays in Literature. Vol. 15, Issue 2 (Fall 1988), 263.
[22] Oehlschlaeger, “The Stoning of Mistress Hutchinson,” 262-263.
[23] Jackson The Lottery.
[24] Whittier, Gayle. “’The Lottery’ as Misogynist Parable.” Women’s Studies. Vol. 18. (1991), 357.
[25] Radford-Ruether, Rosemary. Sexism and God-Talk. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 171-172.
[26] Jackson The Lottery.
[27] In her book Sexism and God-talk, Rosemary Radford-Ruether argues that the witchcraft persecutions in Puritan Massachusetts began to decline by 1700 at least in part because they had served their purpose and were no longer necessary to enforce the patriarchal order.
[28] Radford-Ruether Sexism and God-Talk, 171-172.
[29] Franklin Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, 234.
[30] Von Schnurbein, Stefanie. Norse Revival: Transformations of Germanic Neopaganism. (Boston: Brill, 2016), 17.
[31] “Defining the Enemy.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
[32] Weisel, Elie. Night. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), 70.
[33] Jackson The Lottery.
[34] Weisel Night, 71-72.
[35] Weisel Night, 70; Dwork, Derah, and Robert Jan Van Pelt. Auschwitz.  (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 353.
[36] Jackson The Lottery.
[37] Jackson The Lottery.
[38] Jackson, The Lottery; Robinson, Michael. “Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ and Holocaust Literature.” Humanities. 8.1 (2019).
[39] Nebeker, “‘The Lottery’ Symbolic Tour de Force.” 107.
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Images:
1 Cover. Jackson, Shirley. The Lottery. (New York: Popular Library, 1976). Image is supplied by Amazon.com via Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?413754 . The original image has been cropped. It is utilized under a Creative Commons license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode.

2 New England Village. Photo by Yuval Zukerman on Unsplash 

3 Mountain Goat. Photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash

4 Hale, John, and John Higginson. A modest enquiry into the nature of witchcraft, and how persons guilty of that crime may be convicted: and the means used for their discovery discussed, both negatively and affimatively, according to Scripture and experience. By John Hale, Pastor of the Church of Christ in Beverley, anno domini 1697. [Six lines of Scripture texts]. Printed by B. Green, and J. Allen, for Benjamin Eliot under the town house, 1702. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CB0127095065/ ECCO?u=sain79627&sid=bookmark-ECCO&xid=f70c042b&pg=1. Accessed 10 Jan. 2022.

5 Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Photo via www.auschwitz.org

6 Stonehenge. Public Domain via www.goodfreephotos.com
https://www.goodfreephotos.com/albums/england/other-england/stonehenge-under-the-sunset-skies.jpg