The Witch by shirley jackson
And this is why I don’t talk to strangers.
The coach was so nearly empty that the little boy had a seat all to
himself, and his mother sat across the aisle on the seat next to the little
boy’s sister, a baby with a piece of toast in one hand and a rattle in the
other. She was strapped securely to the seat so she could sit up and
look around, and whenever she began to slip slowly sideways the strap
caught her and held her halfway until her mother turned around and
straightened her again. The little boy was looking out the window and
eating a cookie, and the mother was reading quietly, answering the little
boy’s questions without looking up.
Jackson, Shirley. The Lottery. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 26 June 1948.
Joey’s Song Pick:
Jennifer’s Song Pick:
Why we loved it
We will call Ms. Jackson because we are, in fact, nasty. Let’s be real—we all know the rule: Don’t talk to strangers. But life’s a box of chocolates, and sometimes you accidentally grab the peanut-filled one mid-anaphylactic shock. Oops. Shirley Jackson, the queen of suburban horror, takes that exact oops and twists it into something deliciously sinister. She lures us in with the mundane—a quiet street, an unremarkable man, a conversation so normal it’s almost boring—and then yanks the rug out with the grace of a horror maestro.
But here’s the real question: Who is this strange man?
- Is he Evil incarnate, slipping into ordinary life like a knife through butter?
- A walking metaphor for patriarchal rot, all smiles and empty promises?
- Or is this a dark fairy tale, where the wolf doesn’t bother wearing grandma’s clothes anymore?
Jackson doesn’t hand us answers. She hands us a match and lets us burn the whole thing down ourselves.