“The Lottery” and “Charles”

By Yusuf Amanullah

Is it possible to trust someone that you have just met, even if they appear to be full of innocence and free of deception and trickery? The deceptive side of many people is so well concealed sometimes that their actions and intentions can go unnoticed for weeks, months, or even years. Is deception always purely evil, or is it sometimes just a harmless, innocent act that is done by every young child at one time or another? The two sides of this argument are covered in the fictional short stories “The Lottery” and “Charles” by Shirley Jackson. Both stories – by the same author – are written in a deceptive manner to fool the reader, or another character(s) in the story. In “The Lottery”, we see a quaint, seemingly utopian village host a lottery for an unknown purpose. At the end, the lottery is shockingly revealed to be a drawing to choose which villager will be killed that year. In “Charles” (a realistic fiction story), on the other hand, we see a Kindergartner named Laurie meet a terribly misbehaving child in class called Charles, who he talks about every day when he comes back home. His parents, interested in this Charles character, attend the PTA meeting, and discover that ‘Charles’ is actually just an alias Laurie used to get away with his misbehavior in class. In both “The Lottery” and “Charles”, we learn that it is not uncommon for people to put on a deceptive appearance in order to get away with some kind of malevolent action.

The deceit in each short story takes a different form. “The Lottery’ has a third-person omniscient narrator that overlooks the activities of the villagers. The narrator has no direct effect in the plot, but rather he/she narrates the story in a deliberately deceptive manner. By including descriptions of the serene setting (“The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day”, in the first sentence) and excluding the unappealing parts of the villagers’ lives, the author deceives the reader to build up to the shock ending. On the other hand, “Charles” is narrated from a second-person point of view. The narrator (the mother) is actively involved in the plot, and she is unaware of the actions her son Laurie is doing. Thus, the deception is not entirely created by the author, but it is also partially an effect of the point of view being limited to the main character’s mother only. In both stories, however, the characters’ duplicity becomes apparent to the reader only at the end of the story.

The author’s treachery in “The Lottery” takes a deadly turn at the end of the story, when the true intentions of the villagers become apparent after the lottery is over. With no one to interfere to stop the villagers from conducting this deadly ritual, the residents are able to proceed with the lottery without repercussions. The deceptively utopian appearance of the village masks some of the less-than-friendly actions and comments by some of the characters: Mr. Summers’ unfriendliness, the nervous attitude of the villagers, and Old Man Warner’s “pack of crazy young fools” comment referring to those who wanted to do away with the lottery. Tessie Hutchinson is killed as a result of the lottery.

Laurie’s trickery in “Charles” is relatively harmless compared to the deception in “The Lottery”. Laurie deceives his parents by informing them of what happened in school without using his name, fooling his parents to think for the entire duration of the story that their son was not doing anything wrong. The interest of Laurie’s mom in Charles, which was caused by Laurie’s repeated reports about his activities in school, help the reader figure out the true identity of Charles quicker than the reader can figure out the author’s deception in “The Lottery”. Laurie’s behavior is less toxic as he is only a Kindergartner who may not understand the consequences of his behavior or his deception of his parents, unlike in “The Lottery”, in which the situation is controlled by adults who understand the consequences of their behavior. It turns out in the end, Laurie’s mother find out about her son’s behavior at the PTA meeting at school. This actually can be perceived as a good thing, as if Laurie’s behavior went unmonitored by his parents, it could have resulted in a suspension or expulsion, as even Laurie himself says they are going to “throw him (Charles) out of school, I guess.”

As we see in the two short stories by Shirley Jackson, “Charles” and “The Lottery”, it’s often difficult to trust someone without knowing their true intentions. In “The Lottery”, the deception is created by the author to leave the reader unprepared for the surprise ending, but in “Charles”, the mendacity is more of a technique used to make the story more humorous and to have the reader guess the true identity of Charles. The use of beguilement fits the genre of each story, as “The Lottery” is a more serious, dystopian fiction story, while “Charles” is a more light-hearted realistic fiction tale. In both stories, deceit and trickery are shown to be among the traits of humans, and humans often deceive each other so they can get away with doing what they want. There is no denying that all of us have deceived someone in our lives at one point, whether it was accidental or intentional. It is up to us decide whether this deviousness is truly harmful or an innocent, childish action.