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Symbolism In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

717 Words3 Pages

Symbolism Relating to the Theme “The Lottery” is written by Shirley Jackson and the setting is in the town square on June 27, a beautiful day. While all 300 village members stand together amongst their families, Mr. Summers carries the box to the front of the crowd, followed by Mr. Graves. Inside the box consists of each villagers name written on a slip of paper. Once he reads each name, the family head comes up and draws a slip. After everyone has one, everyone opens their slip, then they quickly realize Bill Hutchinson “got it.” Therefore, a slip of paper is put in the box for each of his household members and then each of his members draw. His wife, Tessie Hutchinson drew the one with the black dot on it. People quickly made a clearing …show more content…

This barely represents a box figure anymore, but the villagers believe highly in tradition, so they will not part with it. Subsequently, as stated in the story, “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 the village here” (par. 5) . Insisting on the use of the box is apparent to the theme because they blindly follow the traditions. Although the box has no impact on the villagers, rather than that they have always used it and they all believe a story that it was made with historic wood pieces, so they will continue to. Their continuation of the box with no impact on the villagers is not the only thing they perceive as necessary to …show more content…

Each villager arrives, collecting stones, then gathering together with their family. Their participation is among the villagers and throughout the years, the tradition has become meaningless over time. No one appears to know when the lottery started nor does anyone know why. Each villager sees to tradition as a thing they have to participate in and the people cannot imagine revolting against it. Therefore, this relates to the theme about how the villagers blindly follow tradition. So, the villagers’ blindness to the lottery allows murder once a year to legally become part of the town. Consequently, the villagers feel powerless to change so they continue with the lottery and no one stops to question why they are doing something without a true meaning behind

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