Literary Devices In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

“The Lottery” is a short story written by Shirley Jackson on June 26th in 1948. It is a story is about a village that uses stoning as a resource to control the village population. A lady named Tessie Hutchinson was selected for the stoning. The literary devices in “The Lottery”demonstrate Shirley Jackson’s moral by showing the danger of following a tradition blindly and how dangerous that can be.
The word tone is an attitude of a writer toward a subject (Literary 1). For example, one of the tones is fear because it describes Tessie pleading to be spared “and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her. “It isn’t fair,”” as you can tell, fear would be a major tone in this story obviously because of the fear of getting

For example, the black spot next to someones name on the slip of paper represented that they were chosen for death because black usually represents death “It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before” “It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her”. “A stone hit her on the side of the head” This proves that the black dot represents death because those selected with it next to their name will be stoned to death. There may also be speculation that the black spot may represent a stone but it may just be in theory that it does. A second example of symbolism would be the black box, now the black box can be used to represent many different things in the short story, the main thing the black box represented was how it was passed down from generation to generation (Literary 3) “The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town”. The black box is also a piece of town history and tradition “Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here”. A third example of a symbol would be the three legged stool each leg stands for God the father, God’s son, and the Holy Spirit based on what happens after someone gets stoned to death “The postmaster, Mr. Graves, followed him, carrying a three- legged stool, and the stool was put in the center of the square and Mr. Summers set the black box down on it” “Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter,