What Is The Symbolism Of The Lottery By Shirley Jackson

In Shirley Jacksons The Lottery, the author creates a story with symbolism, irony, and a ritualized tradition that masks evil, which demonstrates how people blindly follow tradition. Shirley Jacksons suggest about tradition that the lottery is part of the villager traditional life and still hold meaning to them in a way. “By withholding information until the last possible second, Jackson builds the stories suspense and creates a shocking, powerful conclusion” (Fomeshi, Behnam). Jackson uses small clues thought the dialogue of the story that indicate that something is up. An example from the text would be “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest …show more content…
In addition, it was made up with previous parts of the old box to keep tradition “There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here (The Lottery)”. Furthermore, the box holds the ticket slips for voting but this symbol suggest death will come from the box that it is a traditional coffin.” Like the lottery as a whole, the black box has no functionality except during this two hours every June” (Shmoop Editorial Team). Because it decides the fate of one of the villagers. Equally the stones are another significate symbol within the story even though they are just a part of nature and usually symbolize stability; they symbolize as weapons and sacrifice in the story. As well as “Mr. Summers name symbolizes life but in reality it is he who is in charge of the lottery which instead of giving life to its winner it gives death; the lottery is a harbinger of summer and Mr. Summers indicates that”(Fomeshi, …show more content…
Because one of the reasons that the villagers still do the lottery is because of their tradition. As said by Old man Warner “There’s always been a lottery” (The Lottery). For the most part the villagers are strangely calm and talk about farming and gossip like any other day while they are waiting in the square for everyone to show up even though they know something terrible is going to happen and they do not object to it. Since, it is their tradition they think they must do it in order for their crops to grow. “Lottery in June corn heavy soon (The Lottery)” Old man warner is so faithful to the tradition of the lottery that he is afraid that the villagers will return to Stone Age if they stop holding the lottery. “Next thing you, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work anymore, live that way for a while (The Lottery)”. Because of this the villagers are blinded by this tradition of how evil and absurd it really