Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is about a village that sacrifices one person each year for better crops. “Used to be saying about “lottery in June, corn is heavy soon”” (Jackson 187). This sacrifice relates to Rousseau. He suggests that one should die if it is required for the solidarity of the State: “…he ought to die, because it is only on that condition that he has been living in security to the present, and because his life is no longer a mere bounty of nature, but a gift made conditionally by the State” (162). This idea is unrealistic. Under the contract that was made to protect them, how could one be forced to die? The village has been deceived by a lie. Frankfurt would agree; he says, “What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs. Those are what lies misrepresent, by virtue of being false” (10). This can apply to “The Lottery” if one considers the village sovereign to be the liar. The village sovereign, the eldest one, deceives the people in two ways: To think a sacrifice is necessary for fruitful harvest and to think the creators of the lottery truly believed it was necessary. This is a lie because the village sovereign misrepresents the state of affairs , how to better the annual harvest; and also, the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs , the elder’s opinion of what could improve harvest.

Obviously the village, the State, is not concerned with improving individuals’ harvests by sacrifice, but with maintaining order by sacrifice. Rousseau says,

It follows from what has gone before that the general will is always right and tends to the public advantage; but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people are always equally correct. But when factions arise, and partial associations are formed at the expense of the great association the will of each of these associations becomes general in relation to its remembers, …if the general will is to be able to express itself, that there should be no partial society within the State, and that each citizen should think only his own thoughts.

All the members of the village are called to participate in the lottery and to accept the possibility they may die for the good of the village, its general will, which is for better harvest. But a contradiction is blatant in the above passage: The social contract calls for people to express themselves through the general will, but think their own thoughts; Mrs. Hutchinson did not think her village’s custom was fair; however, she was sacrificed for the general will. She says, “’It isn’t fair,’ she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. Old man Warner was saying, “Come on, come on, everyone.”…” (Jackson 189). Mrs. McHutchinson’s ideas were stifled and contradicted by the general will, for ill. The village lies because, each year, the individual who dies and their family cannot benefit from the lottery. The individual who must be sacrificed cannot benefit from the general will. Why would an individual be sacrificed for society if his/her sacrifice did not actually better its harvest? The sacrifice, the lottery, is used to maintain order. Everyone in the village is united under the lottery. There are no factions because the sovereign’s lie deceives the people to believe harvest will only improve if they unite. But one shouldn’t perceive this action as sincere: Everyone unites to murder one individual. Considering this, one might say, “The lottery is bullshit!” But Frankfurt distinguished bullshit from lies. We must read into “Omelas” to understand bullshit.

In Ursula LeGuin’s “The One’s Who Walk Away from the Omelas,” the fictional author sells “Omelas” to the reader. The city is introduced with a celebration: “With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city of Omelas…In other streets the music beat fast, a simmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance” (307). The author tries to deceive us to believe that every day is a celebration, but this one is a Festival of Summer . Obviously not every day would be a party in Omelas, yet we ignore this fact as we imagine Omelas to be utopian society; therefore, the author advertises Omelas well to us .Frankfurt says, “The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept” (4). How the author uses bullshit to sell Omelas is to be established here:

They [a few people] go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from the Omelas (311).

A few people left Omelas and they never returned to it. The author draws readers away from this by identifying Omelas as a place of happiness, identifying places outside Omelas as places of darkness. The author is ultimately concerned with how the reader views their town.. This relates to Frankfurt’s idea of bullshit. Frankfurt says, “The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise” (12). The author’s enterprise is Omelas. The author carefully depicts how Omelas is a happy place, and other places are opposite to the extreme that they may not exist.

The author does mention the mistreatment of the one crap-covered child: “They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, some do not…even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery” (LeGuin 310). The author does not lie, omit, the truth about the crap covered kid. The child could be released; the author acknowledges this truth; “If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place…all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed”(LeGuin 311). While we know the child could live a better life, but the author claims the opposite. The author wants us to believe the intent of Omelas’ ruler, who is probably the author himself/herself, is sincere when s/he locks up the child.

But the child is locked up to show the citizens of Omelas how miserable their life could be, compared to how it actually is. This is to maintain the author’s happy society. This relates to Rousseau because he discussed the necessity of certain individual sacrifices for the better of society (refer to the discussion of “The Lottery”). Rousseau would argue that the crap-covered kid, because he is a member of Omelas and its social contract, should be willing to die for Omelas. The child lives in darkness so the other citizens could live in happiness: “A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards…” (LeGuin 310). Why is it that the author in “Omelas” defines only Omelas as a happy place? Towns besides Omelas as darkness ; the crap-covered kid also lives in little light, essentially darkness. The author may relate the child and towns that are not Omelas to darkness to convince the members of Omelas not to leave it. The author is bullshitting; he is not concerned with citizens being happy nor with the degraded child, but with the reaction of the reader towards Omelas and with maintaining the population of Omelas. Therefore, because his/her only concern is selling Omelas to us, and keeping the current citizens “inside” Omelas, the author is bullshitting. Bullshit exploits truths to deceive us about the intent of the bullshitter; the author is a bullshitter and Omelas is his bullshit town.

Whether it is bullshitting or lying, society is constantly trying to deceive us. When we realize how social contracts concern with society instead of the individual, we may ask, “Is Rousseau bullshitting? Is he lying?” He deceives us into thinking that society, under the social contract, is concerned with individuals’ civil liberties through the general will. Society is really concerned with regulating the State. It does this by marginalizing random individuals to make set an example: this is what happens outside of the social contract. But this is a product of the social contract. Social bullshit and social lies are all products of the social contract. Because we live under social contracts, we are up to our heads in lies and in bullshit.