What Does The Black Box Symbolize In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

Everyone usually has a family tradition that they do every year. Every year my family celebrates Christmas during Christmas we wake up and open gifts and go to my grandparents house for dinner and usually open more gifts. In my short story “The Lottery” their tradition is putting names into a box and if your name gets called and there is a black dot on your slip,you get rocks thrown at you until you die. In The Lottery Jackson uses the black box to symbolize death and if you're going to die. In “The Lottery” Jackson uses a black box to symbolize death, Jackson says “The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been long lost ago,and the black box now had been resting on the stool. It had been there even before old man Warner”(Jackson 1).This shows symbolism because it shows how old the black box really is. The reader of “The Lottery” can tell that author is using symbolism. In the beginning, Shirley Jackson says “the original paraphernalia had been long lost ago”.(Jackson 1). Jackson also says “They always had spoke of making a new box but no one ever wanted to.”(Jackson 1).This symbolizes death because it shows that the black box that they pull names out of is old and that they never wanted to change it.

There was a story that the present box had been made with pieces of the original box that had preceded it.”(Jackson 1).Jackson uses symbolism to show that the black box symbolises death.It also shows they don't want to make a new box because the box had been this way since the lottery had started many years