Question

Describe the setting of "The Lottery." Remember, there are three aspects of setting: where it happens, when it happens, and the environmental conditions. Use clues in the story to identify the time period.

Answer 1

The correct answer to this open question is the following.

Shirley Jackson is the author of "The Lottery."

The setting of the story is an old United States town, a place where people are farmers and plot the land. From the description of the weather, it appears that it is summertime. It seems to be that the place is a quite normal rural American town with nothing interesting happening there. When the reader realizes that people in that town have common daily conversations such as taxes, tractors, and the harvest, the reader never suspects what horrible things are happening in the town until the end of the story. Nobody can imagine what the stones are for.