How Does Shirley Jackson Use Symbols In The Lottery

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, Is about a lottery being held in a small town with 300 people in an unknown country. Every year a lottery is being held where one person is randomly chosen to be stoned to death by individuals in the village, in order to follow the tradition of stoning the person who has a black dot on the slip of paper. Jackson uses symbolism based on the characters name, objects and the setting to allow the readers to identify the true meaning of the story. Firstly, the names of the characters have a great symbolic meaning towards the ending of the story. Jackson uses symbolic names to foreshadow the upcoming event to the individuals whom wins. For example, the Graves and the Summers family, these names are very ironic to

Jackson allows the readers to think that this event is a joke because these kids are picking certain stones for an upcoming murderous event and to see that the children are easily following the elders’ steps. Another example would be “the black box” and the black spot on the “fatal slips of paper”. The description of these two objects is very symbolic to death and evil. Starting of with the box, it’s described as being_ “splintered badly,… and in some places faded or stained” which symbolizes the individuals family falling apart due to the fact of the death of the person. The black spot on the “fatal slips of paper” represent darkness and evil since the color of the dot is black and it also symbolizes the person who gets stoned to death during the lottery next. From these two items of “the black box” and the black spot on the “fatal slips” could’ve been orange, blue, purple or any other color but made it stay as black which allows readers to realize that the villagers are scared to change anything from the