Death, Blindness, And Symbolism In 'The Lottery'

In the story of The Lottery, there are many symbols being used in the story. The functions of those symbols are death, blindness, acceptance, ritual, tradition and rock. The objects and characters in the story are the symbols and it has hidden meaning to each of them. The Lottery is one of the symbols itself. Mr. Summers is the man who conducts the lottery, and the lottery tradition happens every summer for every year. Mr. Summers and the lottery are always together. Mr. Harry Graves helps Mr. Summers to prepare the papers for the lottery. Mr. Harry Graves name indicates that there is a grave waiting for someone after the lottery is finished. I think the lottery is about someone winning money, or something valuable when I first see the …show more content…
They use the lottery to choose one person to sacrifice for the village to make the crop products grow. Old Man Warner is the oldest in town, yet he never wins the lottery before. He is a ritual keeper, or a death bringer. The message of this story is the blindness and acceptance of death. No one can see what is in the black box, but they have to reach their hands in there to pick one of the paper. One of the people in the village is going to die every year. The allegory of the story is how the lottery winner is supposed to win something special like money or things that are valuable, but the winner will get stone to death. Nobody thinks it is a death sentence. The children around the village are enjoying the event by gathering the rocks to throw at the winner. Shirley Jackson turns everyone in the story into a cold hearted killer. The children are the symbol of innocence. They supposed to have the great memories of their childhood with their friends and families. They are an innocence souls and minds that just know how to dream. Shirley Jackson kills the symbol of innocence by turning the children into a deadly killer. They do not have any regret or sympathy toward the …show more content…
Shirley turns the children into the devil himself. It is not just the children, but everyone in the village has turned into a deadly killer. Everyone in the village can be the victim, no matter who they are, and how old they are, they will become the victim one day. The marked paper will decide they get to live or die. It is a matter of luck and proportion of the number of the marked papers that are in the box. Tessie protects her husband from death when he gets the marked paper. They have to draw another lottery between her families. At the end, she gets the marked paper and her husband does not even seem to care that she is about to die. Her family turns against her even though she tries her best to save her husband and they stone her to death after she tries to protect the one that she loves. The story combines allegory and symbols together to make the story more interesting. It is a plot twist how we think the lottery is about winning money at first when we read the title, but it is not like that at all. Shirley uses all of the symbols above to turn this story into a magnificent short story. It works so well together that we have to read the story until the end to find out how unexpected the