Symbols In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

The village people had stones for people who died based off the black slips from the box. For example, this line from the story states that the piles of stones that the boys had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box(Jackson 425). Based on this quote the reader could tell that the village people had the stones made with a tag on them. The lottery had many symbols throughout the story but this essay only include the three legged stool, the black box, and the stones.

Starting off as an ominous pile collected by the children of the village they turn into the murder weapons of “The Lottery”. There is a specific reason Jackson decided on death-by-stoning. Stoning is a crowd engendered death. The horror of "The Lottery" is not someone is murdered, or even someone is murdered while everyone watches. The disgust is everyone takes part in the murder.

There was a story that the present box had been made with pieces of the original box that had preceded it. ”(Jackson 1).Jackson uses symbolism to show that the black box symbolises death. It also shows they don't want to make a new box because the box had been this way since the lottery had started many years

This shows how casually that SS officer murdered the children and how surprised Elie was when they did it. Another reason is millions of people died, it 's why the Holocaust is greatly remembered. " ...allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned" (Wiesel 68). This stands out because many Jews died so brutally and they couldn 't do anything to stop it. Which is much more important than fire and night.

The Lottery is a short story about a town of people that will crowd and all the men will get a slip of paper all the paper is blank… besides one and that one has a black dot, so a lucky person will get it and if they have a kid older than 16 they have play this game, anyway the winner will get a “prize”. The Lottery story and The Lottery movie have many things that were different. The Lottery story is different from The Lottery movie by where it is located and where the event took place, such as in the story they were sacrificing someone in a large field while in the movie they were stopped by the building. If they didn’t have the building in the way she could have lived longer while if they did she would have died sooner.

They do this because it’s a tradition and they believe it to be the reason for their town 's prosperity. We read this story in class and watched a movie based off of it. There are some similarities but the two are very different.

In “The Lottery” the people seem clueless about what wining the lottery actually means. They don't seem to understand that it is something that leads to death in fact they seem to be helping the process by collecting sones, “Booby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones;” (Jackson, 92). The children in this story are collecting stones which will be used to kill the one selected and yet there seems to be no fear of possibly be the one chosen or fear of what comes for the chosen one in a sense that seem happy on this day. In goes on to say “Soon the men began to gather…their jokes were quiet and and they smiled… The women…came shortly after their menfolk.

The black box in the lottery was symbolic of the tradition of the Lottery itself, as Mr. Summers even “spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box…” because he had to interact with it, unlike the other villagers. So in this, he reflects the villagers thought for change when they personally had to face the reality of winning the Lottery. As even the color of the black box is representative of the murder that occurs if you pull out the slip with the dot. Likewise, stool that upholds the black box is representative of the person that upholds the tradition as the one who is stoned to death.

Other symbols that are connected in the story are the slips of paper and the black box. In the story, the slip of paper symbolizes equality among the villagers, “All of us took the same chance.” (Jackson 423). This means that all the villagers take the same chance to win on the lottery. On the other hand, the black box symbolizes death and evil.

This is one of the basis of society and it always do the most of its efforts to apply it in the society. When a murder kills someone it is duty of the society to punish murder. When someone is killed, victim’s family suffer and nothing can heal those even punishment of murder by capital punishment or by vengeance. However, it can be considered from another side. If convicted person to execution was innocent and capital punishment apply for he or she, where is the justice?

Children run around finding stones and placing them in the town square, and everyone is talking about a strange black box and how ratty it has become but will not be replaced because it is a tradition. Jackson pokes holes in the devoutness of tradition by stating that this wasn’t the original box that at some point had become lost and that the town agreed to switch from the traditional woodchips to pieces of paper being drawn. If the town was so set on the traditions for fear of the unknown happening to them then why were these factors allowed to be altered with no consequence? The blind tolerance of the village lottery condones a horrific murder of a citizen each year. The lack of reason for this lottery shows how dangerous it is to act so thoughtlessly.

Who will win, what do they win? While in charge of the “lottery”, Mr. Summers doesn’t support its traditions and feels the town should end it like a few surrounding towns have recently done. To him, the black box represents death and bad traditions in the community. His community members think it 's “Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody.” They fear the young people are the ones changing the traditions and ending this tradition will lead to other breakdowns in society.

Shirley Jackson uses specific diction and language in order to convey an ominous tone in her short story “The Lottery”. In this short story, a small town holds a lottery every year, but this “lottery” is unlike any other. In the end, who ever wins this lottery is stoned to death, as all part of a ritual. According to the short story on pages 32 to 33, it states, “She hesitated for a minute, looking around defiantly, and then set her lips and went up to the box.” (32-33)The author uses the word “defiantly” which means “boldly, or rebelliously”.

Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery” uses specific details regarding the stones to convey a malicious tone. This is because by the end of this short story, the reader discovers the unsettling role the stones play in the lottery. Near the end of the story, Jackson reveals to the reader that “although the villagers had forgotten the rituals and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (34). To paraphrase, the people of the village only preserve one of the original traditions from the lottery, stoning the “winner” to death. Not only does this indicate how hostile the inhabitants of this village are, but it also unmasks a sort of numbness that the villagers display towards the idea of murdering someone.