Symbols In The Lottery

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, a short story, which adopts symbolism into making the tone of the story effective. The protagonist of the story is the village itself, and the antagonist of the story is the harvest ritual or the ‘lottery’. Every piece of symbolism in the short story is important, such as black wooden box in the lottery, embodies the villagers devotion to tradition. There are other pieces of symbolism in the story; the fatal slip symbolizes the danger in following an act blindly, Tessie embodies absurd violence, along with sacrifice and, lastly is Old Man Warren, who symbolizes tradition himself. “The Lottery” represents the chance of execution, and that blindly following tradition is dangerous, it is effective by the presence

The first piece of symbolism that is revealed is the black box, it represents the villagers devotion to their traditional ritual. For the audience to truly understand what is the tradition, it must come occur in order for the audience to understand, which leads to the next piece of symbolism, Old Man Warner symbolizes tradition. He embodies tradition because he's been involved in it longer than the other villagers, he is fully devoted, committed to the ritual and, defends the ritual. To begin leading the crowd towards curiosity about what the ‘prize’ would be, although it gives the audience thoughts that the ‘prize’ isn’t actually a prize. This is extracted from when Tessie makes Mr. Summers redo the ritual because she thought he had rushed her husband into picking a paper, and is reluctant to taking a slip out of the box. Tessie is then stoned to death after the villagers knew she had the fatal slip for the ritual, Tessie symbolizes sacrifice, and absurd violence. The symbol of sacrifice and, absurd or unavailing violence came up suddenly at the end of the story was very unexpected for the audience because of the sudden transition from drawing slips at the lottery to violence, which made the presence of resentment and anxiousness, led to the theme of