Summary Of Symbolism In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

The lottery is about a little village where they had a gathering called “The Lottery.” where who ever got the black dot would be stoned. For example as the author quotes “Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her” as quoted in “The Lottery”by Shirley Jackson. In the short story “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson uses symbolism to illustrate the themes of the tradition and randomness of persecution.

In the short story it show the tradition on how dangerous it is when people follow it blindly. The villagers seem harmless even with their preparation. They had an unpopular man to do the lottery, also the children ran to gather stones in the town square.

The black dot in The Lottery `means death in the short story. For example, the black dot on the paper means death in the story. Whoever was the one to draw the paper with the black dot was the one to get stoned. The person who chose the paper with the black dot on it was Tessie Hutchinson, and she said, “It isn’t fair.” She thinks that Mr. Summers didn’t give her husband enough time to choose a paper and that's why their family had to choose a paper and she was the one to get the dot. Another symbol in the story is the black box which symbolizes evil, death, and oldness. In the story, they mentioned that the box was old and falling apart. They would also use a paper to cover the hole in the box. The box was used to put all the papers in including the paper with the black dot used for the lottery. The box was very old because it was a tradition to do the lottery once a year. They always talked about getting a new box for the lottery, but they never actually got a new box so they keep using the old one every year. Like said in the story, “The black box grew shabbier each year: by now it was no longer completely black, but splintered badly along the side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained.” (Jackson) Meaning that the box was very old and fragile. Also in the story, the author stated, “some places on the box were stained and faded.” (Jackson) So, if the box is really old and fragile and the box was stained and faded, that means that they have done the lottery for a long time already. They had the tradition since Old Man Warner was born and he was one of the oldest people living in that village, so that tells you that this tradition has been going on for generations. Another symbol in the story is stoning. Stoning in the story symbolizes death, because they are going to be throwing stones, pebbles, rocks, and any other type of stones. They used to stone people because they