SOURCE: “Jackson's ‘The Lottery,’” The Explicator, Vol. 50, No. 3, Spring, 1992, pp. 183-85.

In the following essay, Cervo explains the biblical significance of the name “Delacroix” in “The Lottery.”

In Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery,” the name “Delacroix” plays a key thematic role. We are told that “the villagers pronounced this name ‘Dellacroy’.” In French, “Delacroix” means “of the Cross.” The mispronunciation signals the villagers' botching of the traditional Christian understanding of the Crucifixion. By so doing, they do not give perfect expression to what may be termed the archetypal mandate urged by their collective unconscious. Instead they conflate Hebrew and Egyptian religious ideas and practices to make them stand in place of the bloodless sacrifice of the Mass. The result is a hodgepodge of elements of the lottery by which the Hebrews chose the scapegoat, the punitive measure of stoning offenders to death (from which Jesus saved the woman taken...