The Lottery

“The Lottery” is a short story belonging to the genres of dystopian literature and horror. Dystopian literature—often seen as a subgenre of science fiction or speculative fiction—depicts societies in a state of moral, political, and/or social decline, usually marked by mass suffering and oppression. It is worth noting that the society in which “The Lottery” takes place does not have the sort of cataclysmic air that is common in much dystopian fiction; people, on the whole, seem to be living happy and carefree lives. Still, the fact that there is an annual “lottery” tradition in which one person in every town is randomly selected to be stoned to death (including by members of their own family) suggests that there are deep-seated moral and social issues in this society.