Beverley Yuen: The Lottery in Babylon

Borges’ “The Lottery in Babylon” revolves around one of the most powerful and signifying forces in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon: the Lottery. The Company, the underlying force behind the Lottery, created this formerly simple game “played by commoners” which appealed to man’s “hopefulness” (Borges, p. 102). At first, a man would be given the chance to win a small amount of money, but it quickly turned into a dangerous yet exciting game of chance full of “lucky” and “unlucky” draws. “A lucky draw might bring a man’s elevation to the council of the magi or the imprisonment of his enemy (secret, or know by all to be so), or might allow him to find, in the peaceful dimness of his room, the woman who would begin to disturb him, or whom he had never hoped to see again; an unlucky draw: mutilation, dishonor of many kinds, death itself” (Borges, p. 103). This simple game of chance attracted and compelled people to continue playing, despite the very large risks that accompanied the slight possibilities of reward. The Lottery itself seems to act as a metaphor for the role of chance in one’s life and how there are chances of good and bad things occurring in life, but we cannot control the outcome and must leave it in the hands of fate.

The time in which this story was written is rationalized by this metaphor of chance in one’s life. As the 1940s begin, World War II and all the dangers and violence associated with it is thrust upon the entire world. In a world full of terror, one’s life and future is not guaranteed; no one knew if they would live or die. Borges wrote this story to accurately reflect and portray the feelings about chance and life during times of hardship. He rationalized the actions of people during this crazed time as well. Though this may not be accurate, perhaps people took comfort in playing the lottery, or just plain gambling, during this time. It was a game of chance that they initiated; that they had some semblance of control and choice in participating, unlike the war. This could also be what compelled the Babylonian people to invest their entire lives to the Lottery. In the city of Babylon, the governing force of law was the Code of Hammurabi. The Code held the laws of punishment of Babylon that took the Bible’s “an eye for an eye” wholeheartedly. The punishments, though equal in a straight “everything is black and white” sense, were very violent, gruesome, and unorthodox. A couple of laws are, “if a man puts out the eye of an equal, his eye shall be put out” and “if a man strikes a pregnant woman, thereby causing her to miscarry and die, the assailant’s daughter shall be put to death.” The story even references these set of laws in which “a slave stole a crimson ticket; the drawing determined that the ticket entitled the bearer to have his tongue burned out. The code of law provided the same sentence for stealing a lottery ticket. Some Babylonians argues that the slave deserved the burning iron for being a thief; others, more magnanimous, that the executioner should employ the iron because thus fate had decreed…” (Borges. P. 103). Living in a world with such constant intensity and fear might drive people to take comfort in a game of chance with the Lottery, in which they still face the same monetary and life dangers as living normally under the law but, with the lottery, they gain the opportunity to earn great rewards. Both groups of people did not like their current surroundings, so the lottery was an escape from the real world in which they could take part and somewhat control their fate.

Within the first page of the story, both the Jewish and Greek cultures are referenced. Borges mentions the Hebrew letters Aleph, Beth, and Gimel. In Hebrew, Babylon means “to confuse.” Later, Borges references a few Greek philosophers and warriors. In Greek, Babylon means “gateway of the gods.” Both are extremely relevant in the overwhelming magical realist binary of reality/fantasy. The existence of the Company and the Lottery is often questioned. Are they real or just a fantasy created to nurture the broken minds of the scared Babylonians? The Lottery was all powerful, resembling that of a sacred deity. The drawings were secret and sacred, “which were held in labyrinths of the god every sixty nights and determined each man’s destiny until the next drawing” (Borges, p. 103). These sacred drawings are the Company’s only contact to the outside world. The Company is barely known about and never seen; they pull the strings behind the stage that is the Lottery. “There is nothing so tainted with fiction as the history of the Company…A paleographic document, unearthed at a certain temple, may come from yesterday’s drawing or from a drawing that took place centuries ago. No book is published without some discrepancy between each of the edition’s copies. Scribes take a secret oath to omit, interpolate, alter” (Borges, p. 105). Nothing is known about the past, or the present. “The Company, with godlike modesty, shuns all publicity. Its agents, of course, are secret; the orders it constantly (perhaps continually) imparts are no different from those spread wholesale by imposters” (Borges, p. 106). There are so many different chances in life and so much violence integrated into the Babylonian society that there is no discrepancy between the acts of punishment ordered by the Company and the everyday sins and violence of people. This illustrates how the existence of the Company, and in turn the Lottery, is questioned. There are no traces of them in history or everyday activity, so does that mean they are imaginary? Are they deemed real because of their significance in society as the Babylonian people have become accustomed to their apparent presence? This questioning or “confusion” relates back to the earlier reference to the Hebrew translation of Babylon.

The “Babylonians are not speculative people; they obey the dictates of chance, surrender their lives, their hopes, their nameless terror to it, but it never occurs to them to delve into its labyrinthine laws or the revolving spheres that manifest its workings” (Borges, p. 104). The Babylonians do not want to ruin a good thing; they do not want to search through the hidden labyrinths of the Company and uncover truths that could disturb their lives even more. There are many views about the Company’s doings. “[The Company’s] silent functioning, like God’s, inspires all manner of conjectures. One scurrilously suggests that the Company ceased to exist hundreds of years ago, and that the sacred disorder of our lives is purely hereditary, traditional; another believes that the Company is eternal, and teaches that it shall endure until the last night, when the god shall annihilate the earth” (Borges, p. 106). Again, the Company’s existence is questioned by some people, while others believe the entity to be eternal and compare its might and sacredness to that of God. In becoming so important in determining the fate and destiny of people, the Babylonians believe the Company resembles a deity; a god, which relates to the Greek translation of Babylon. Babylon is the “gateway of the gods,” and the gods in Babylon have taken the form of the Company. The Lottery in Babylon is the Company’s, the gods’, gateway to the Babylonians.

Similar to Borges’ other stories, the concept of infinity is addressed very much, especially at the end of the story in describing this game of chance and the powers of the lottery draws. There are so many decisions and subdivisions that can be determined with the draw of a single paper that “the number of draws is infinite. No decision is final; all branch into others. [Only] the ignorant assume that infinite drawings require infinite time; actually, all that is required if that time be infinitely subdivisble” (Borges, p. 105). The amount of drawings will always be infinite as there are so many details in a situation that a multitude of decisions can suddenly be created. “Babylon is nothing but an infinite game of chance” (Borges, p. 106).