Similarities Between The Village And The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

In the thrilling film, The Village, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, as well as the short story, “The Lottery”, written by American author, Shirley Jackson, symbolism appears to conquer all else. Both Shyamalan and Jackson use unconventional objects to represent a unique outlook into the lives that each of the characters in the stories live: black boxes. In the two storylines, these black boxes represent tradition that holds mystery to those that do not comprehend and even in The Village, others do not even know that this tradition exists. The rituals that the individuals in both of the fictional societies practice come off as dishonorable, unfair, and evil. The idea that an item indefinitely illustrates the way that the individuals live their lives is mind opening as well as pulls the entirety of …show more content…
The townspeople take out a black box once a year in the summer season, on the date of June 27th, and have done so for a considerable amount of time. In this black box holds slips of paper with one paper containing a black dot on it. Whomever draws this slip of paper is the person that has been chosen to be stoned to death. The stones have been collected by the children before the ceremonial lottery has begun, so after the slip of death has been chosen by Tessie Hutchinson, the children proceed by approaching her throwing stones and rocks at her until she is pronounced dead. In some way, the color of the box—black— in itself represents death. According to blogger Jennifer Bourne, “Black is associated with power, fear, mystery, strength, authority, elegance, formality, death, evil, and aggression, authority, rebellion, and sophistication.” (Bourne) When individuals die, we embalm them and subsequently put the body in a burial box. Burial boxes such as coffins and caskets represent death, as the box in “The Lottery” represents death to the