Symbolism in “The Lottery”
The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a story full of symbolism. The yearly lottery is an event that has taken place on June 27th, every year for as long as anyone can remember. For this lottery every member of the community gathers in the town square mid morning to participate. Every head of household draws a slip of paper from the traditional black box. One of those slips has a black dot on it. Whoever gets the black dot must then put their paper back in the black box and each member of his family must draw a slip. Whichever one draws the black dot is then the lottery winner. The villagers, without any sense of remorse or sorrow, then stone this person to death with stones that the children have innocently collected in piles. “The Lottery” uses symbolism to give you insight of what is to come at the end of the lottery. As you read the story you can pick out the symbolism from items used in the lottery, the color black which is used on the items throughout the story and from the period of time of which the story takes place.
The items used in the story to hold the lottery are significant in their own way. The box that the lottery papers are held in is described to be an old
…show more content…
worn black box. It is an old box that is worn out from many years of use. Even so, the lottery has been going on in this town for so long that this is not the original box, but rather a second box made from scraps left over from the first. The use of the pieces of the first box in the second box and the fact that they will not trade the old box in for something new hints to the reader that they are very set in their ways and don’t want to break any significant part of the tradition. This box also seems represents a coffin or casket. A coffin or casket is a large box that holds a deceased person. The box in the story is a box that holds the name of a dead person. Unfortunately, nobody knows whose name the box holds until the drawing. The little slips of paper that they use for the lottery are all blank except one which has a big black dot on it. We often think of death and darkness when we see the color black. The black dot in this story seems to represent death. “Bill Hutchison went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal-company office.”(Perrine 295) The time period of this story is also very symbolic.
The story seemingly takes place somewhere in or about the twentieth century. “Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes” (259). The presence of tractors shows us that this takes place in the twentieth century. We are also told that Mr. Summers is wearing a clean white shirt and blue jeans. Blue jeans were not around nor predominant until the twentieth century. These symbolic details make the story close to home, instead of setback in the dark ages. The fact that it was set only a few decades ago makes the story’s ending even more horrific and unreal. No one wants to believe that such a thing could happen in modern day
America. “The Lottery” is full of symbolism which helps to make the story more real and more alive. The story can awaken emotions and memories deep within a reader by using this technique. People do not want to believe that such things as described in the story could still take place in the modern everyday society of America and other countries around the world. The thought of this occurring scares many people and makes them wonder just how civilized we the people really are. Works Cited Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” Arp, Thomas R., and Greg Johnson, eds. Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense. 12th ed. Cenage Learning: Stanford, 2015. 259 & 295. Print.
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is a short story about a small town’s annual lottery drawing. Each year, the lottery is held, and instead of the winner being rewarded, members of the community stone them to death. The residents of the town have practiced this tradition for at least 70 years. Jackson’s use of symbols, names, and settings hide the true nature of this long-practiced tradition.
One of the main symbols of the story is the setting. It takes place in a normal small town on a nice summer day. "The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blooming profusely and the grass was richly green." (Jackson 347).This tricks the reader into a disturbingly unaware state,
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a chilling tale of a harsh ritualistic gathering conducted by people of a small village. The word lottery would typically remind someone of a drawing to win a cash prize. A better comparison to the story would be the lottery used to select troops for the Vietnam War; a lottery of death. Another would be the human sacrifices the Aztecs willingly made long ago.
“The Lottery” written by Shirley Jackson in 1948 is a provoking piece of literature about a town that continues a tradition of stoning, yet they do not know why the ritual started in the first place. As Jackson sets the scene, the villagers seem ordinary; but seeing that winning the lottery is fatal, the villagers are then viewed murders. Disagreeing with the results of the lottery, Tessie Hutchinson is exposed to an external conflict between herself and the town. Annually on June 27th, the villagers gather to participate in the lottery. Every head of household, archetypally male, draws for the fate of their family, but Tessie protests as she receives her prize of a stoning after winning the lottery. Jackson uses different symbols−symbolic characters, symbolic acts, and allegories−to develop a central theme: individual versus society.
The lottery consists of a black box full of blanks pieces of paper and one marked piece of paper. The person who draws the marked piece of paper is the one who endures the horrible fate of being stoned. This black box is very significant because it an s symbol of tradition. Just like tradition, it has been used for many years. Because it symbol in this story is the black box, which is used in the lottery process. . The box is a symbol of tradition and just like tradition; it has been used for many years. “ There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village.” It is old and needs to be replaced with a new one but none ...
"The Lottery", a short story, by Shirley Jackson is a very suspenseful yet shocking read, which focus on how tragic it can be to blindly follow a tradition. The story is set in a small town, on the summer morning of June 27th. The story begins with the towns people gathering in the town square to carry out a lottery. The author explains that this is a long standing tradition in the local towns, where people gather every year to conduct a lottery. However, as the story progresses the reader come to realize that this story is not as simple and straight forward as the title suggests. Rather, it is dark and horrifying cautionary tale about repercussions of blindly following traditions and how this problem is exacerbated due to societal pressures.
The Lottery is a story about a tradition that has been going on for many years, but leads to death at the end. In the town square, villagers gather and watch as Mr. Sumemers brings out the black box, that is part of the tradition known as The Lottery, and mixes the slips in the box. He calls up each family and if they get a blank paper, they are safe and if they get a paper with a black dot on it, they get “the lottery”. In other towns, the lottery used to go on for 2 days straight. In the town square, the children are gathering stones and organizing them, the women are talking to each other, and the men are discussing their jobs and taxes. When someone gets picked as the lottery “winner”, they get stoned. After Bill Hutchison gets picked,
Symbolism and Setting in The Lottery by Shirley Jackson The Lottery?The?The? by Shirley Jackson is a short story that, without the symbolism of its characters, would amount to little more than an odd tale about stoning. However, because of what each character represents and the way the setting helps to magnify those. representations, it becomes a short story that is anything but short of meaning. The first character is probably the most obvious. symbolic character of the story.
“The Lottery” is a story written by Shirley Jackson. By looking at the title you may think about money prize. In this story takes the readers expectation to another level. By the two words of the title there is no way the reader did not get hook to reading this story. In “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson, uses symbolism, irony, and imagery.
Theme is the central message that an author is trying to make. A story’s theme can differ based on different types of literature. For example, Commercial Fiction will appeal to a wide range of readers, and it will be easy to pick up on. However, Literary Fiction provides a theme that deals with issues that could change society. “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, is a piece of forcible Literary Fiction. Her short story deals with a fear that many Americans often face, the fear of breaking tradition. Jackson provides her readers with the reoccurring theme of fear that comes from breaking tradition; this fear brings blindness to logical thinking and
The village has its own unique lottery. The winner of the game will receive a card with a black dot. This means the surrounding villager will stone them to death! Shirley Jackson develops her theme of the danger of blindly following tradition in her short story, "The Lottery" through the use of symbolism, mood, and irony. The black dot represents the winner of the lottery.
The practice of cultivating has been prominent in many civilizations and regions around the world. Individual groups would take to extreme measures to bring a good harvest season, including taking part in sacrifices. These sacrifices would start with a few individuals, but as hope faded and the crops delayed their arrival, more and more people were sacrificed, as can be seen in the Aztec civilization. Much like the Aztecs, Jackson’s villagers in “The Lottery” have an intrinsic need to perform such a ritual by stoning the victor of a lottery. By utilizing religious references and symbols through her characters, their symbolic meaning, and setting, Shirley Jackson conveys the major theme and overall meaning of the short story: the dangers of
Black, white, summer, grave: all of these words have something in common. Each word used by an author creates a tone. In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson used tone and symbolism to create a representative story that portrayed struggles that occurred near the time of conception of the story. She used symbolistic words to create a more intricate, underlying story than what was publicized. Throughout the story, character names and objects, symbolic actions, and the countless other details supporting the overall theme of conformity and tradition create a fascinating, but gruesome, experience.
The story “The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson in 1948 is about a yearly tradition that to whole town took part in it. Most people have traditions they celebrate every year, and they have symbolic items or meanings to them. Some traditions can be good or bad; however, people continue them anyways. In the story “The Lottery,” there is many different symbolic traditions.
You would never think that happiness can be good and bad at the same time, In “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson uses imagery to support this idea.