Plot Summary And Symbolism In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

The conversation held on Monday with regard to the detailed symbolism and meaning behind various elements of the story "The Lottery" will greatly aid in my ability to extrapolate an overall theme and perform a written analysis upon it. It is critical when trying to find a major theme to submit as the ultimate take away from the story that all or most of the finest details are understood. For instance, "The Lottery" could be summarized simply as follows: a whole bunch of people got together, they drew paper slips, the person with the colored slip was stoned, the end. However, such a summarization hardly captures even the precipice of any kind of theme contained in the story. More context is needed to proceed, thus it's important to note theme greatly differs from mere summarization in that summarization details how and what happened, whereas theme details why the events occurred as they did, and what lesson or message did those events reasonably convey to the reader. "The Lottery" opens in great detail describing a large gathering of all the people within the village the story takes place. A man by the name of Mr. Summers stands prominently distinct from the rest of the crowd as what we …show more content…
All but one of the slips contained in the box is blank, the final slip distinctly marked by coal. We know from the story that this lottery process is an annual occurrence that has been part of the village tradition for quite a while. The black box is said to be older than even the oldest man in town who is in his late seventies, and even before that wood chips were used instead though when they became too old to any longer be usable, they were incorporated into the new black box that would go on to facilitate further lotteries for many years to come. The lottery tradition was so deeply rooted in the minds of the people that they had no will to change the black box for any other means of facilitating the