Shirley Jackson Literary Devices

In Jackson’s “The Lottery” (1948), she lulls the reader into thinking that the story is going to end on a positive note by using three aspects of literary devices: setting, symbolism and imagery. She uses setting to make the reader stray away from any negatives and start off the story on a positive note, symbolism to depict a positive scenery, and imagery in which she uses descriptive words or phrases for the reader to create mental images and distracts the reader from focusing on the main event of the story. In turn, the reader doesn’t anticipate the ending; resulting in a final effect of shock and horror towards the ending of the story. Jackson uses setting to refrain the reader from being able to predict what would

“Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example.” (Jackson 1) This statement serves to illustrate the actions of the younger children following the actions of the older children. This statement caused much of a distraction in which it made me visualize something that didn’t contribute to the ending of the story. The statement, “Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys,” (Jackson 1) made me visualize boys creating a wall of stones of their own sides and that they would playfully throw rocks at the other side and that the pile of stones serves to protect them from the raid. This seems normal to me when boys play rough games because that’s stereotypical for a boy. Some people may think that it’s deleterious for children to throw rocks others, but I didn’t think of that from when they collected specifically “smoothest and roundest stones”. “Bobby Martin ducked under his mother’s grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones.” (Jackson 1) The statement illustrated how the children were reluctant to stay with their parents when they were called and returned back