Use Of Imagery In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

The Lottery, written by Shirley Jackson, using literary elements such as imagery and repetition to convey that death is inevitable but how people act end their life early. The lottery and a social commentary on frivolous barbarity, and how people take life for granted because they don’t understand the true meaning of what death is. Death can not be avoided, but a life can be taken quicker than expected because of the need to live. Jackson use color and visual imagery to display the beautiful day the village people have the day of the lottery. The morning is “clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day,” (Jackson 263), which is ironic because of the dark undertones the story has. There are “flowers [...] blossoming profusely” (Jackson 263) above the grass that was “richly green” (Jackson 263). Jackson includes this visual and color imagery to show that the people of the village take these perfect days for granted. The reader can hardly remember the beautiful morning Jackson paints because of the brutal attack that happens at the end. …show more content…
While the beginning of the story starts with a beautiful day, it’s when the black lottery box is introduced a dark cloud looms begins to loom over the village. The old box becomes “shabbier each year” (Jackson 264) because of its old age. The box “was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side” (Jackson 264) having been used for so long. It is as old as death, and brings the dark atmosphere to the story that Jackson wants it to convey. The “faded [...] stained” (Jackson 264) box is painted to be old and dark because it is supposed to represent death. No one gives the box any second thought because of its age, and it has been apart of the people’s culture for centuries. This is to show how lightly the village people take death because if someone dies that means they get to live. That is all they really care