Essay On Symbolism In The Lottery

Author's Note: I’ve decided to do a response on symbolism throughout the short book “The Lottery”. I wanted to give my personal opinion on how symbolism was presented to me as I read the story. This response was out of my comfort zone, which is why I wanted this to become a challenge for me. My goal is to explain my thought process with well-written reasoning to prove my point. Also, I would like my audience to understand what symbolism really is, and how it relates to “The Lottery”.

First of all, what actually is symbolism? According to the dictionary, it states: the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. This definition can be confusing because the meaning is so broad. This is why I want to use The Lottery as an example to show what symbolism means throughout the short story.

The definition states

These symbols are in the names of the people themselves. First of all, Old Man Warner's name fits very well with his actions. He seems to be constantly “warning” people about how the lottery was better in the past. He says,
“....Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery.”
As you can see, this is why his name symbolizes his character of warning people about the past. He says these sayings multiple times throughout the book. Mr. Graves is another symbol displayed though the name. Mr.Graves helps conduct the lottery and in reality, helps send people to their graves. He doesn't do this every once and awhile, he seems to help out annually. Which means this is really a tradition for him, apparently to help send his townspeople to their deaths. Another one I found was that Mr. Graves is the one who owns the box. It states,
“The rest of the year, the box was put way, sometimes one place, sometimes another; it had spent one year in Mr. Graves's barn and another year underfoot in the post office.