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Most of us are raised from childhood with the notion that obedience to authority is an intrinsic and universal good. “Clean your room like your mother asked!” We’ve all been subjected to the seemingly torturous will of our parents that won’t let us go outside until that room is cleaned. It is even written into religious doctrine, “Honor thy father and mother.” Do we even honor thy alcoholic father that beat on the wife and children, or thy addict mother that abandoned the children to live with a dope dealer? The simple fact is that no authority request should be this absolutist, and the question is: At what point is authority no longer appropriate? Before answering this we must also ask ourselves how exactly over 900 ordinarily rational beings are turned into suicidal zealots. The tragedy of People’s Temple in the jungles of South America is testament to the fact that as rational beings we must always be critical of the legitimacy of the authority we are subjected to. Shirley Jackson also illustrates this same ‘civic duty’ to question the status quo in her short story The Lottery. There are several parallels between the lessons of the Jonestown Massacre, and The Lottery that illustrate our need to question the legitimacy of established traditions and authority figures. First of all, before we begin imposing our own judgment on any religious sect, we must extensively examine the circumstances that allowed mass suicide to be carried out. No specific faith or race is to blame here, but rather a lack of critical thinking and rational judgment on the part of the congregation of The People’s Temple. Even then, all of these people were interested in doing god’s will and practicing their faith, and Jones offered an alternative blend of Christianity with a real authenticity to it. Jim Jones was a man with the dangerous charisma of an Adolf Hitler, with the ‘hand of god’ guiding him. As humans we have seen this all too many times; a charismatic and daring leader rising to power in the name of the good of ‘the people’, only to puppet their frustrations and emotions to further an equally oppressive agenda. Member’s of Jones’ People’s Temple not only believed in the power of Jim Jones to metaphorically heal society’s ills, but literally believed in Jones’ miracle faith healings. Whether it was out right acting, or some kind of placebo effect, blind faith led nearly a thousand people from their loving families in rural California to a compound in the jungles of South America. The population of the People’s Temple remained pleased for quite a while with the philanthropic work they had been undertaking and the agriculture life the compound offered; that is until some members began to want to see their family back on the mainland. For most Americans, this kind of request wouldn’t be too much to ask. For a paranoid leader, now with the sex and drug addictions of a rock star, it was the drop that tipped the bucket. Cameras and spy equipment were moved in like some kind of KGB outpost. Defectors were being ratted out. Yet almost all them remained there as willing participants because again, Jim Jones was the knight in shining armor. Paradoxically, to them, Jones represented anti-establishment, anti-imperialism, anti-intolerance, and everything wrong with America, while they lived in fear in his compound away from their families and unable to speak freely or leave the compound. Jones had them convinced, as leaders often do, that they need him. It literally was the ultimate paradox in the sense that it was security they found in Jonestown, but Jonestown perpetuated blind fear. Fear from what? Society back at home would reject them, oppress them, and slap them back down to the lower classes where they had come from. But the ground beneath them began to crumble as US congressman Leo Ryan announced plans to investigate the Jonestown Compound. Upon arriving, Ryan and aides were savagely gunned down with AK-47’s (obviously the hand of god?) and Jim Jones began to formulate his version of the final solution. He would wield his influence to exploit their fears of being outcasts in American society and their faith in Jesus Christ to push upon them: Redemptive Suicide. But most importantly, one must know the Jonestown deaths were not all suicides. Yes, although some were eager to practice redemptive suicide, surely the hundreds of children that died had no concept of killing yourself to preserve your beliefs in the face of an intolerant and imperialist homeland. And so it goes, over 900 people had their lives cut short for Jones to send a message to American society. All that potential and willingness to serve their god and fellow man was sadly twisted by a cunning man. But before you begin chastising Jim Jones and the absurdities of redemptive suicide, just listen to the words of one of our ‘respected’ politicians: “According to [Ronald] Reagan, this young father declared, "I would rather see my little girls die now, still believing in God, than have them grow up under communism and one day die no longer believing in God." In praising this young man, Reagan concluded that this willingness to sacrifice his children revealed "the profound truth" about "the physical and the soul and what was truly important." Revealing the "truth" of the American soul, this willingness to sacrifice promised to redeem that soul from a communist fate worse than death. According to Ronald Reagan, therefore, redemptive sacrifice was the "profound truth" at the heart of America.” (Chidester) While on the one hand the Jonestown massacre can be taken in quite literally, Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery is written allegorically, as to say it could happen in ‘Anywhere, USA’. This stark difference is important because while some people can detach themselves from those lives lost in the jungles of Guyana because they are nameless faces, The Lottery could happen at anytime, and at any scale, whether it is your small town, suburbia, or entire nations. The literary scene Jackson builds is one of an old fashioned, patriarchal society rich in superstition and barbaric tendencies. The Villagers gather in June each year for a random drawing of one member of the town that they will stone to death. There is seemingly no reason for this murder other than the fact that it was done the year before. Now Jackson is not asking us to watch out for neighbors that want to stone you to death, she is symbolically warning against outdated practices and beliefs. Helen E. Nebeker argues in her critical essay The Lottery: a Symbolic Tour de Force, agrees that the story is rich in symbolism, such as the three legged stool (holy trinity), and the names of characters (Dickie Delecroix=of the cross). She argues that although some traditions are deeply rooted in our society and we eagerly pass them down to our children, it doesn’t necessarily entail truth. In this case, tradition and Christianity can be used interchangeably. Tradition ‘defines our universe’, and allows some people to grasp something they feel is ‘real’ or something that can give their seemingly insignificant lives a purpose. The population at large always attempt to subscribe to some idea larger than them, or for someone to be their savior. Realistically, there is no one to ride in on a white horse and rescue us; we must be our own saviors. Nebeker reminds us that while the entire town respects the leaders in charge of the festivities such as Old Man Warner, Summers, Graves, and Martin, this is much the case of our modern society because every society has it’s priesthoods that dangle salvation in front of the masses like the ultimate dog bone. Unwavering and unquestioning faith is somehow a virtue in this case, and can even get you into heaven. The citizens in the Lottery are looking for this very something larger, and almost all of them believe that the idyllic life can be found in a modest, submissive life. As the master of ceremonies continues to draw names from the hat, the citizens get increasingly nervous, but ironically enough, as sheep-like as ever. Jackson introduces some shock value into her short story with the drawing of Tessie Hutchison, and the subsequent throwing of stones that ends her life. In her dying breath, she ironically claims “It’s not fair…” Jackson stresses a significant amount of irony in this statement, being that a lottery couldn’t possibly be unfair. The only thing unfair here is that they subject each other to such repetitive barbarism, while they continue to hold themselves as civilized individuals. But thus far, that has proved to be the fate of humanity; to preach peace but wage war; to spread tolerance, but deny rights (proposition 8 in California); to encourage fiscal responsibility to some, but to hand out corporate welfare to others. All blatant fallacies in our logic but appear to make sense in the cultural zeitgeist. Moreover, it seems as humans we never quite learn from history because we detach ourselves from situations like the above mentioned. “Well that couldn’t happen to me!” is a sadly naïve line of thought. We must always be vigilant, and remember that murder and treachery aren’t just the work of our enemies, it can just as easily be rituals that we subscribe to and authority we place our full faith in. These cunning men come in all shapes, sizes, beliefs, genders, and ethnicities, from the sleek rock star image of the Reverend Jim Jones to the simple pleasantness of Old Man Warner from The Lottery. Whether it be the wandering soul just looking for god, but found death in a jungle, or the villager who just helped stone their neighbor for no reason other than they did it last year and everyone else is doing it, we are all our worst enemies. Works Cited
Chidester, David. "Jonestown
and Peoples Temple." Encyclopedia
of Religion. Ed. Lindsay
Jones. Vol. 7. 2nd
ed. Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2005. Gale
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Oct. 2008 Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” Reading and Writing About Literature. Ed. Philip Sipiora. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. 2002: 124-130.
Nebeker, Helen E.
"'The Lottery': Symbolic
Tour de Force." American
Literature. 46.1 1974, Mar
100-107.Contemporary
Literary Criticism. Ed.
Christopher Giroux and
Brigham Narins. Vol. 87.
Detroit: Gale Research,
1995. 100-107. Literature
Resource Center. Gale. HENRY
FORD COMMUNITY COLLEGE. 30
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