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Community In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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Recommended: Extended literary analysis over 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”. All lottery activities usually end at noon, so villagers can get home …show more content…

The explanations of civil activities switching to stoning of a community member changed only words, but never attitude. Jackson made sure to keep the tone rather casual despite the conflicts. “The Lottery” began casually, describing the normal day of the annual lottery, “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny...the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner...children assembled first... they broke out in boisterous play...jokes were quiet...The women...exchanged bits of gossip...The lottery was conducted...civic activities (Jackson …show more content…

There is much symbolism hidden within the lines and small items and words. The black box, the black spot, even the villagers’ names, have symbolism. The black box is a form of symbolism for death, by its color, and it is also a symbol for the reuse of the lottery. According to LitCharts, the symbolism in the black box is related to the mentality of the villagers. LitCharts explains, “The box is worn and old, but the villagers do not want to “upset tradition” by replacing it...black box lends confidence to the villagers because it reminds them to trust in the tradition of their forefathers—never considering that those traditions might be immoral (LitCharts

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In the text it describes how, “Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to even upset as much tradition as was represented by the black box” (Jackson 1). Even though the box is old and the always talk about a new one, the villagers are too scared to replace it. This helps the readers understand more about the ritual and the box. It also clarifies what they do with the box when it’s not in use. “The rest of the year, the box was put away, sometimes one place, sometimes another; it had spent one year in Mr.Graves’s barn and another year underfoot in the post office.

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In the story, it is stated, “The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock; [...] the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner” (Jackson 250-251). This detail specifically entails how important this lottery is for the villagers to unite, leading them to a shocking custom of choosing who gets to be stoned to death. The villagers are aware of what atrocity they are going through, yet no one ever questions their customs because traditions are to be continued through beliefs and customs to show oneness, even if it leads to cruel-ness. The interesting part of believing in such a tradition is that the villagers never chose to believe in it, but were forced.

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