Novelist, short story writer, and nonfiction writer, Shirley Jackson was an American author of gothic horror fiction. She was best known for her short story “The Lottery,” a classic tale originally published in the New Yorker. A story about the grotesque prejudices hidden in ordinary life, "The Lottery" established Jackson's central themes that would continue throughout his work. Jackson's stories illustrate society's universal evil, despair, and madness that lurk just beneath the surface of ordinary life, blurring the line between fact and fiction. With this comes his ability to transform and shock his reader, manipulating their expectations of his work and the world around him. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original EssayThe psychological lens is the optimal critical lens to use when analyzing Shirley Jackson's short stories. Based on the principles of Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, psychological criticism examines the personality patterns, virtues, and behavior of an author and his or her characters. Critics focus not only on the minds of the characters, but also on the actions and choices they make based on the society around them. In her contemporary literary criticism of Jackson, Granville Hicks, American novelist and literary critic, states in "The Nightmare in Reality": "Well informed of the opinions of the Freudians and other schools of psychology, Miss Jackson was never interested in theories psychological. for themselves but only for the literary use that it could make of it. Using psychological theory as a tool in his work, Jackson repeatedly bases his societies and characters on recognizable patterns of human behavior and universal human problems. By writing his fiction as a psychological study, Jackson is able to develop his character and plot in a much more realistic and meaningful way. If Jackson enjoyed using psychological theory as a writing tool, then it is more effective to view his work as a form of psychological inquiry. A common theme displayed in many of Jackson's stories is the concept of dreams, or more specifically, the conflict between reality and imagination. In Freud's principles, the "dream", or commonly in Jackson's case, the "nightmare", contains symbolic clues to the ego's subconscious motivations and themes. Psychological investigation is an attempt to study human nature and behavior from an outside perspective, a perspective of which the subject is not fully aware. Jackson's work perfectly reflects this investigation. As Elizabeth Janeway said in a review of Jackson in The New York Times, "Jackson's fantasy is of a different kind." She starts from reality and her metaphors and analogies always start from a living center... In her stories, the border between the world and the dream shifts and varies; the dream shines through and colors reality.” With this comes Jackson's gift: she does not create a world of fiction and terror, but rather discovers, or investigates, the existence of terror and madness in the ordinary world. This is seen most clearly in his classic American short story, “The Lottery.” Set in the present day, "The Lottery" depicts a perfectly ordinary town, the environment is comforting and friendly, and as the town's residents begin to gather, the atmosphere is calm, almost that of a carnival. Boys collect stones while girls chatand chat together. “The morning of June 27 was clear and sunny, with the cool warmth of a full summer day; the flowers bloomed profusely and the grass was a rich green. The people of the village began to gather in the square... Soon, the men began to gather. questioning their own children, talking about plantations and rain, tractors and taxes... their jokes were calm and they smiled rather than laughed...". The village Jackson created represents an ideal, happy American community. Friendship, trust, and goodwill are evident everywhere among its members. However, as in many of Jackson's stories, happiness and perfection are not quite what they seem. To maintain paradise, good citizens must ritually sacrifice one of their members each year by stoning him to death. Such barbarity is practiced every year by drawing lots: a family is drawn by lot and, within this family, a person. It is here that the reader begins to see Jackson's psychological horror. The event is set up to be a normal routine, and within tradition through Jackson's description and character dialogue. It was something the villagers repeated every time, so the reader wouldn't suspect anything out of the ordinary. As Jackson writes, “The lottery was organized – as were the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program – by Mr. Summers. who had time and energy to devote to civic activities…”. By creating a happy, perfect, civic atmosphere, Jackson deceives his readers into a facade of ordinary life. They find comfort in what seems like an ideal friendly community. This aspect of Jackson's writing allows him to blur the line between reality and fiction. By the end of the story, however, the reality the reader has connected to is rooted in violence and prejudice. In psychological criticism, characters are often analyzed to represent their real-life counterparts. Jackson takes advantage of this phenomenon: the stonings are committed by ordinary people in the city, whom Jackson previously considered pleasant, often good people. Yet, without hesitation, they turn away from their facade and engage in an act of such violence and cruelty. Their nature has been sanctioned by tradition and superstition, and thus their judgment between good and evil has been obscured. In “The Lottery,” Jackson works within the idea of ​​possibility. She continually asks the questions in her fiction: What can society, the ordinary world, be capable of? What are human beings capable of? What cruelty lies beneath the surface of reality? Stories like “The Lottery” make the reader question the society around them. Acting as a basis for psychological investigation, “The Lottery” allows the reader to analyze how an ideal and friendly small town could become rooted in such a barbaric tradition. His stories, again and again, strive to illustrate these details: what humanity could be and the madness that lies just beneath the surface of reality. Jackson's fiction, while reflecting on analytical technique, is also interested in the psychology of groups and society. Often the decisions and outcomes in his stories are driven by a mob mentality, where people are influenced by their peers and surrounding society to adopt certain behaviors. By treating society as its own character, psychological criticism can focus on the motivations, desires, and conflicts of a specific group rather than an individual. As Carol Cleveland critic Shirley Jackson says, “In Jackson's world, the culprits are not greedy or crazy individuals, but society itself acting collectively and deliberately, like a slightly preoccupied lynch mob.” Consider Jackson’s “The Lottery” again. In "The Lottery", the final moments of the story reveal that the "winner" is stoned by the rest of the village. The citizens of the city commit murder without hesitation or questioning. Murder has been part of their tradition for centuries, and they still love it, like everyone else, and everyone has been doing it for centuries. This is a direct example of mob mentality. Cleveland continues his critique: "Crimes, even murder, are constantly being committed in his world, but there is usually no one innocent enough to bring the guilty to justice." Everyone in the fictional town of Jackson is equally responsible for the horror of the story, as each individual contributes to the stoning, without even questioning their actions, turning a blind eye to mercy and morality. Therefore, there is no reason to bring the culprit to justice. In “The Lottery,” society depicts outlaws who feel that what the village is doing is wrong. The crimes committed are neither illegal nor wrong in the city because society does not consider them illegal. The old saying about this event is: "The lottery in June, the corn will soon be heavy." In the story, society murders literary people, but this is justified by the mob mentality that reigns in the city: the spending of a few will bring prosperity to the many. Every summer sacrifice results in a successful future harvest. By the end of the story, Jackson writes, "although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones." The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready…Tessie Hutchinson now stood in the center of an open space, and she held out her hands desperately as the villagers approached her….” Tessie Hutchinson's last words are "It's not fair, it's not right." Yet what is about to happen to him is perfectly right and perfectly consistent with the logic and mentality of his community that has guided the city's actions up to this point. It is only when Tessie is forced to imagine the lottery from the victim's point of view, as she is chosen for sacrifice, that the lottery becomes unfair and immoral. This prospect was repeatedly avoided by her and the rest of the village. Obscured by the fact that sacrifice brings prosperity, the “Lottery” society has lost its vision. At the end of the story, Tessie pays the price for this lack of vision and the complete lack of perspective and sympathy within her community. Other Jackson stories, such as "The Lottery", also focus on the psychology of society. In the story "Colloquy" by Shirley Jackson, originally published in the New Yorker, Mrs. Arnold, the main protagonist, is driven to see a psychiatrist because of her confusion and shock at the changing world around her. She lost, and Mrs. Arnold says, "A world where a lot of people lived too and they all lived together and things went that way without fuss...". Her psychiatrist tries to push her to accept "reality" and its changes, as he describes the world as having "cultural patterns that are rapidly disintegrating." Yet Mrs. Arnold refuses to accept the reality around her and refuses to adapt to the doctor's disjointed world. The story ends with Mrs. Arnold leaving the doctor's office, but readers sense the higher price Mrs. Arnold will pay for her inability to change.In “Colloquy,” the remainder of society’s definition of reality, represented by the doctor’s opinion, will cause her to fall down the path of loneliness and madness. “Before the doctor could stop her, she walked to the door and opened it. ‘Reality,’ she said and walked out” (Jackson 45). Here Jackson uses another example of mob mentality, but in "Colloquy" society is depicted as a force that destroys the opinion and reality of those who cannot accept it. John G. Parks makes this phenomenon clear in his critical analysis Chambers of Yearning: Shirley Jackson's Use of the Gothic: "...the concern of much of Jackson's fiction...is to reveal and relate the outrage...arising from the violation of self by a broken world…”. Like many of his stories, society in “Colloquy,” the outside world, limits the inner self. Mrs. Arnold has failed to harmoniously accept the changes in society that she has observed, and as a result, she will fall into despair. Unlike “The Lottery,” Jackson represents society as the reasonable side. To the reader, Mrs. Arnold is already described as crazy and crazy. His dialogue is pure gibberish, while the doctor's statements are based on facts and observations. There, however, lies a simple problem that leads to her madness: she cannot see her inner self reflected in the world, and therefore her expectations of the world should not be met. “Colloquium” illustrates a fundamental problem in human and group psychology: we cannot adapt the world to our own meanings and expectations, as society is far too complex and collective. The aging society in Jackson's stories represents a collective force. It cannot change to serve an individual's opinion. As Parks continues his analysis, "most of Jackson's protagonists are emotionally violated and must struggle desperately to overcome their estrangement and dislocation, and most of them fail." At the end of the session, the reader is meant to sympathize with Mrs. Arnold. Society has wronged her, and readers, as part of this collective force, feel sorry for Mrs. Arnold. The society they and everyone else have accepted seems distorted from Mrs. Arnold's point of view. But this problem can be reversed. It's clear that the gap between Mrs. Arnold's reality and the reality around her has no hope of compromise, as she is most likely heading down the path to madness. Nevertheless, because Ms. Arnold is herself "broken" and incapable of change, she continues to perpetuate a broken society. Broken people creating a broken world. In this perspective, the madness into which Mrs. Arnold will sink is not the fault of society, but the fault of Mrs. Arnold herself. Reversing blame creates a shift in psychological study: the motivations and virtues of an individual are the creation of the problems in a society. It is not surprising that Jackson's fiction also exhibits traits in this area of ​​psychology. “The Possibility of Evil,” one of Jackson's many short stories, acts as a psychological study of individual character. Unlike "The Lottery" and "Colloquy", the psychological lens can be used to study the internal motivations and morals hidden within a story's characters. Miss Adela Strangeworth, the protagonist of "The Possibility of Evil", lives alone in a house on Pleasant Street in a small town. As Jackson describes it: "She knew everyone in town, of course...she had never spent more than a day outside of this town in her long life...". Like a database, Miss Strangeworth seems to be behind everything that is currently happening in her town, that he.