Symbolism In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

When you think of a monster what do you think of? Maybe a childhood bully, a big beast with scary looking features, or maybe the monsters from the movie Monsters Inc. We all have a different perspective on what a monster could be. The dictionary definition of a monster is “an imaginary creature that is typically large, ugly, and frightening” but there is more than one definition of what a monster could be. For instance a monster could be a group of people who cause harm on to a group in society. A monster could be someone who could come off as a nice person but really have bad intentions. Well in the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson the monster of the story takes the form of a old and violent tradition. Jackson’s story highlights

At the beginning of the story we get an image of a group students gathering together after the last day of school right before summer for the ceremony. After the children got out of school they all started to collect “the smoothest and roundest stones” (17). While reading this one might not think much of the children picking up smooth stones. The symbolism behind the stones is not a negative one because you might think that the kids are picking up the stones to go out and skip them on the water to have fun since they just got out of school for summer. The symbolism Jackson attaches to the stones later in the story is reveled to be the ultimate conundrum since those very stones that the kids picked up would be the ones they would use for the death of one unfortunate person of their town. One more way that Jackson uses symbolism in the story to give something a deeper meaning is the black box that the citizens of the town use for their ceremony. The box that they used for the ceremony “grew shabbier each year: by now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained.”(18) This representation of the box is a great use of symbolism. When the people of the town had a clear understanding of the reason behind their tradition the box was new. Over time the tradition lost its true meaning, and this is represented symbolically through the deterioration of the box. The symbolism used throughout the story helps exemplify the idea that blind obedience itself is the monster behind the tradition that the people of the town