Irony And Symbolism In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

Throughout the course of human history, people from a variety of cultures have crafted their own cultural, religious, and familial traditions based on communal beliefs. To this day, people from around the world continue to carry out rituals from hundreds of years ago that their ancestors held to be both beneficial and necessary in maintaining a thriving society. These practices, however, have the potential to be malicious and harmful to society. As one of the most famous short stories in American literature, The Lottery provides the reader with a tale about the practices of a small, fictional town that holds an annual lottery each year. Through Shirley Jackson’s use of irony, symbolism, and setting in The Lottery, I found the main theme to

Even though there are a plethora of symbolic objects in this story, I felt that the black box, by far, served to be the most symbolic of them all. The color of the box, which is black, represents evil, death, and pessimism, and as the years went by, “…The black box grew shabbier each year; by now it was no longer completely black, but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained” (Jackson, 444). The black box is a physical manifestation of reluctance of the villagers to break away from tradition and even replace it. The three-legged stool upon which the black box is rested on represents the trinity in the Christian faith and the practice of some people to use religion to support violence. Mr. Summers’ name is representative of the optimistic façade his name provides to hide the evil and corruption he continues to uphold every year. The method of stoning people to kill them represents the backwardness of this tradition and goes to show how this ritual has been practiced since medieval times. Jackson stated that “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones… [the boys] eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys” (Jackson,

Shirley Jackson successfully uses setting to foreshadow an ironic ending. At the very beginning of the story, she describes the setting by saying “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green” (Jackson, 443). The setting of the story was very optimistic, although it contrasted with the end, which led to the death of a housewife. This excerpt provides the reader with peaceful and tranquil tone. The fact that Jackson chose the summer solstice, also known as the longest day of the year, as the day that the lottery takes place each year shows the ritualistic undertones she wanted to convey. Jackson goes on to say that “School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and of reprimands” (Jackson, 443). The kids were filled with excitement for summer, and felt a sense of liberty. Jackson wants the reader to believe that the town was ordinary and innocent, although the story ends with an ending of a terrible stoning. The fact that this story is located in a “village”, although it does not have any specific name shows how attached to tradition the villagers