In the story witten by Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery”, the author talks about a small village that holds an annual lottery. It is said thay all the men gather in thier groups as well as the women and the children. Stone are gathered by the little ones only choosing the best they could find. It may seem harmless at first but by the end of the story we find out that the “winner” of the lottery is stoned to death. The use of symbolism in the story helps explain the theme of “The Lottery” which affect the tone/mood of the story. The theme of this short story is about population control, and the act of blindly following traditions that are morally wrong. It says that “...the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more easily into the black box.” (Jackson page 2 paragraph 3). So the reason they host the lottery is to try and maintain and control the population the best way that they can. If they were to grow at a faster rate then they may not have enough food to distribute throughout the village. So in order to stop or slow the growth of the population they host the lottery as they have for many generations. Due to the fact that it’s been hosted for so long they just follow it without thinking. So changes have to be made due to the increasing population but the people of the village don’t like the idea of changing traditions as shown in the quote “ Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about