What Does The Box Symbolize In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

In Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery, she paints a beautiful portrait of how different cultures follow traditions blindly. This was shown through traditions carried throughout the years and always followed by the entire town. This town held their traditions dear to their hearts and found it obscene that other towns near them had stopped performing the lottery. In the story, there were many illustrations of symbolism that were used to push the meaning of the story. Without these representations the story would not have an underlying meaning.

One symbol in the story, the black box, was a very ominous box that seemed to control the people. This is also the first sign in the story you see which represents the town’s obsession with tradition. The box had been painted black, but “The black box grew shabbier each year (Jackson 2).” The black paint on the box also represented the presence of death. This representation isn’t actually noticed until the end of the story. The tradition behind the box was shown when some people in the village wanted to make a new box that was not covered in rough wood. “No one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box (Jackson 1).” The box represented a relic passed down from generation. Although this is one symbol in the story, the act

of performing the lottery itself would be considered its own symbol. The lottery was something that the people followed religiously like the people before them had. The people thought there was a significance behind it and blindly continued to do it each year.
Another symbol in the story would be the papers at the end of the story.

The head of each family drew pieces of paper from the black box to see who had won the lottery. Whoever had a black dot on their slip of paper had won the lottery. After the lottery had taken place and the winner had been stoned to death, it mentions the papers on the ground, “on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box (Jackson 7).” The wind then blew these papers away and out of the town. These papers in a way symbolized all the people before who had won the lottery and been forgotten. No one picked up the papers or cared to clean up showing that they didn’t

care.
The last important symbol in the story is the stoning itself. Most people would recall the story in the Bible when the people were going to stone the woman for cheating on her husband. Jesus then came and said “He who is without sin cast the first stone.” Even though it is not mentioned in the story it sticks to people due to the importance of the passage. The act of stoning also has been the primary method of execution throughout history. Stoning was used so everyone participated in the execution. As it mentions in the story “Bobby Martin ducked under his mother's grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones (Jackson 1)” even the children participated in this cruel act. This gave all of the town people an excuse and also created a situation where the blame for the act could not be placed on one person.
In the end, this story has a very ironic meaning. When thinking about a lottery, readers often think of winning a prize, although in the story the prize was not something that the people wanted to win. The story most importantly shows how culture is too closely tied to its traditions whether good or bad. Although heritage is important, traditions can be outdated or in the case of this story be inhumane.