What Is Symbolism In The Lottery

Each short story has its own style, form and content although authors tend to add their own little touches to them, which makes each one somewhat different to the others. A good example of an authors touch within a short story would be "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, since she uses a fair amount of symbolism in order to relate the contents of the story to the story itself, such as the names of the characters, objects as well as certain events. Symbolism is used a lot in many different writings, but how can symbolism within "The Lottery" help reflect on what the short story will eventually lead to? I believe that symbolism that is used within that short story will give the readers hints about the story and will also broaden their thoughts …show more content…
Summers, the Graves family, the Delacroix family and Old man Warner. Each one of these characters are important since each one of them symbolize key aspects that can be related to the story. Starting off with Mr. Summers, the word that you can notice from his name is "summer" and can most likely be a symbolic representation of the time that the lottery takes place since, coincidentally, the lottery happens during the summer. Also, knowing that the lottery takes place during the summer, it can most likely relate Mr. Summers ' role in the village is to lead the lottery. Now for the Delacroix family, the name itself is French for "of the cross", which can be a religious symbol for an interpretation of Jesus Christ ' execution on a cross by the Romans. Now, the execution which takes place in the story is the death of Mrs. Hutchinson. Moving on to the Graves family who can be seen as a symbol for the death of somebody since "grave" is fairly apparent in their name. Since Mr. Graves has helped Mr. Summers with putting in the slips of papers into the black …show more content…
I think that the black box itself symbolizes death since, for one, its black color is associated with death in many cultures and that every slip of paper that gets put in there, at least one person will die from it if said person gets picked. I also believe that the black box is, to some extent, the life of the lottery within the village. It is mentioned multiple times that the black box "grew shabbier each year" and that some parts of the box are "faded or stained" so I speculate that as years go by, the tradition itself is slowly dying as the black box is falling apart. It is also mentioned by the Mr. and Mrs. Adams that other villages have abandoned the lottery so the tradition itself is starting to die off even more. As a final point, the black box in "The Lottery" carries heavy symbolism that I find to be a nice touch by Jackson because of the many possible interpretations that the reader can have about it and how it aids with forming speculations about how the end of the story can