Symbolism Inthe Lottery

Symbolism in "The Lottery"

Today's society relates a lottery with something positive such as, winning or a hopeful adventure that will lead to good things to come. Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is quite the opposite. Symbolism fills the plot in "The Lottery". Jackson introduces the reader to a village that practices an annual event which has been a tradition for many years. The ritual is: the head of the household draws a slip of paper from an old, worn, black box. One of the slips has a black dot, and the villager who draws this paper is stoned to death. One of the residents gets sacrificed at each yearly lottery. The villagers all take part in the murder of an innocent citizen without any remorse or guilty feelings just because it is part of a tradition that no one questions.

"The Lottery" is composed of two types of symbols: the black box containing the slips of paper and the lottery process, which is the annual tradition of the village. Both the lottery and the black box have become part of history. No one knows when the lottery tradition began nor do they know how old the box is. The villagers know "it had spent one year in Mr. Graves's barn and another year underfoot in the post office and sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there" (214). The purpose of the box, like the lottery, has become unclear with the passing of time. It was worn, but the villagers could not let it go, just like the lottery. Other nearby villages had discontinued the lottery, but this particular village of 300 people was too loyal to the idea. The black box changes the cheerful atmosphere of the event. Mr. Graves brought the box in, the mood of the villagers change. The color black represents evil and the box holds the key between life and death.

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