Think about the millions of clams who have to die each and every year. For what? For the pleasure of eating? To facilitate company picnics? Because the other person is doing it, too? Or was Shirley Jackson hinting about this particular truth when she wrote “The Lottery?” Maybe that is so. Just maybe. Jackson regularly received hate mail from her neighbors and readers, a fact not well known and very sad. But perhaps that was just an inevitable part of being a literary visionary. She had the courage to explore the darkest recesses of the human psyche, and perhaps, if my chilling line of reasoning is correct, she was hinting that something was very rotten in Nantucket.
There are over 2,000 varieties of a race that goes back to long before man walked the earth. In fact, scientists have recently discovered mining activity of a very sophisticated nature dating back 300,000,000 years. Lithophaga, ancient bivalve clams, were boring deep into limestone deposits. Why? Were they searching for precious and useful ores? Gemstones to decorate their palaces and abodes and temples? Constructing underground cities the likes of which would not be seen for millions of years in the future? Or perhaps the answer is more direct, and more chilling - to protect themselves from predators.
Not human predators, of course, so clams have obviously have a hard time of it for many millions of years. Mankind, then, is just the newest species to find clams not only industrious and fine meteorologist, but tasty, too.
Meteorologists? I’ll get to that in a second. Clams, bless their little hearts, live in the surf and in tidal flats, hurting no one and asking nothing but to be left alone. And always, they are hunted down and killed. There are the Quahogs, the Cherrystones and littleneck clams, horse clams and Manila clams, Pismos and cockles, sand clams and butter clams and macomas. There are Geoducs and the magnificent giant clams. Don’t forget the razors and so many other members of this great clan of clams. And be very thankful you are not one of them.
Now what about this terrible Nantucket ritual that ties directly to “The Lottery?” In brief, Quentin, a Quahog, is kidnapped every year and kept a prisoner in a base and rusty refrigerator until that fateful day in February. Then, the villagers, in a ritual far more disturbing than even those in “The Lottery,” pry him open with a clam knife in sick parody of Groundhog Day. In this case, they watch to see in which direction Quentin squirts. If it’s to the left, the simple townspeople believe they are in for six more weeks of winter. If it’s to the right, fine weather lies ahead.
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