Theme, Symbolism In The Lottery, By Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson created a short story by the name of “The Lottery”, which was published by The New Yorker in 1948. “The Lottery” talks about a community in which the villagers gather once a year on June 27th to have a village wide lottery. The head of households are called by surname and pick a slip of paper from a black box that has been used for generations as per tradition. When a family has been chosen by the lottery, each member participates in a family lottery. Once a family member is chosen by a black dot on their paper slip, the family, excluding the chosen family member, joins the community once again, and the community comes together to stone to death the “winner”.

In the story "The Lottery," one theme that could be found would be to not do something just because it 's always been done. In this story, villagers have a drawing every year and pick one person to stone to death, as a sacrifice for good crops. This is obviously a very horrific and barbaric tradition, but people continue to do it because they believe it will bring the town good crops. The reveal of what the lottery actually is doesn 't come until the end of the story, and is a big shock to the reader. This is because of how the author portrayed the setting.

This shows that she is trying to change the rules to benefit herself now that she knows that she is the chosen one. At first, the reader doesn’t see why it’s so bad to be chosen because their thinking is of a modern-day lottery when the winner will receive a huge cash prize, but this is certainly not the case. It is revealed that the “winner” of the lottery will be stoned to death by everyone in the town. In fact, this is related to karma and how wrongdoing will result in payback. The ending puts an effect on the reader because it can be seen why she was stoned, due to her greediness, and total selfishness, that results in her death.

Mr. Summers wants to make a new box because he wasn’t used to the tradition of the lottery, although he is the director of it. “Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody” (95). Therefore, the black box symbolizes the tradition of

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. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip” (Jackson, 92).

Where each family member picks a slip of paper from the box and the individual with the marked gets stoned to death. 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. For instance, the way the Lottery is done is the same.

The villagers patiently wait in line for the dreaded lottery, make small talk with their fellow villagers, and do what they’re told even though they are fully aware of the lottery’s outcome. However, it is abundantly clear that tensions begin to rise in the story. The first sign that there’s something wrong is “the feeling of liberty [that] sat uneasily on most of [the children].’ One would think that after being released from school for the summer, laughter would be heard throughout the village. Rather than playing games, the children are stuffing stones in their pockets and making piles of them the corner. Another subtle sign of trouble is

“The Lottery” is an realism/horror story written by Shirley Jackson. The story is about some villagers of a small New England town who follow the tradition of making a lottery every year. When it comes, they like to celebrate it with the correct rules and the correct objects so they can feel more comfortable. Everyone need to take a slip of paper from a small black box, and the paper with a black dot in it means that the family is the winner, then they raffle again; Bill Hutchinson, who was the husband of the protagonist Tessie Hutchinson picked a paper with a black dot in it, that meant that Tessie was the winner of the lottery, then she starts complaining because the drawing was not conducted properly. At the end, the townspeople moved off to a cleared spot outside the town and they begin stoning her to death (Jackson).

“The Lottery”, a short story by Shirley Jackson, is about a lottery that takes place in a small village. The story starts off with the whole town gathering in the town square, where Mr. Summers holds the lottery. Once everyone gathers, every family draws a slip of paper out of an old black box, and the family with the black mark on their paper gets picked. After that, each family member older than 3 years of age re-draws a slip of paper again and this time, the person with the black mark on their paper gets picked as the “lucky winner” of the lottery. In this short story, after the Hutchinson family gets drawn, Tessie Hutchinson is declared “winner” of the lottery, with her reward is being stoned to death.

After Mrs. Hutchinson is finally chosen, someone says “let’s finish quickly,” and the crowd advances on Mrs. Hutchinson, bringing a deep sense of foreboding in the reader. Mrs. Hutchinson, who was in favor of the lottery before, now begins to protest vehemently the ethicality of the practice. Everyone begins to pick up stones. Mrs. Delacroix, who minutes ago was laughing with Mrs. Hutchinson, “[selects] a stone so large she had to [use] two hands” (75). Someone even gives her little son Davy a few “pebbles with which to stone his mother (76).