English discussions +math

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Ariel Goodie

Professor Katherine

Intro to Literature

September 15, 2020

Symbolism in Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery

Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery uses a third objective point of view, where the narrator is

depicted as an external observer of the events and activities surrounding the yearly event. The

narrator is not involved in the activities of the lottery, which makes the readers know very little

about the narrator's views, perceptions, and attitudes regarding the lottery. However, the readers

can deduce the views of the narrator from the dialogue and the styles employed by the author.

Symbolism is the dominating style where the author uses objects that denote the civility and

outlook of the town's people. Though Shirley Jackson's short story, The Lottery describes the

annual lottery where the town selects a person who could be stoned to death by the townspeople,

in reality, it uses the lottery as a symbol of blind adherence to tradition and the black box to show

that the practice is no longer important to the small town.

The yearly lottery represents blind adherence to an old tradition. The people in the town,

whose number has now grown to three hundred, do not know when or why the practice started.

Even the oldest man in the town does not exceptionally provide insightful information about the

tradition. The narrator shows how the people were eager to take part in the practice. Their wives

or the eldest sons represented men who could not be available. They did not consider giving up

on the culture, explaining why they did not hesitate to stone to death any selected persons. The

old man, Warner, says, "There has always been a lottery" to show that the practice is ancient, and

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no persons have been opposed to it. He celebrates taking part in the seventy-seventh time,

meaning he has seen seventy-seven people stoned to death. His celebration for taking part

indicates that he considers the tradition necessary. The lottery has always been there for the

people, and they do not want a culture in which it does not exist. They are committed to blindly

follow the tradition, despite knowing that some towns have done away with it.

The community does not revere the black box. The narrator shows the reader that the

town did not have a plan for storing the black box. It is stored in Mr. Summers' officer, the

grocery store, and the post office. This denotes that the box did not have a designated place in

society. The townspeople did not need the box, and on a more symbolic level, they needed to get

rid of the box and the tradition. The townspeople note that the box is not the original one,

symbolically denoting the changes the town has undergone, which call for eradicating the

practice.

Shirley Jackson has authored a short story about a small town that continues with an old

tradition that entails selecting a person killed by the rest of the townspeople. The lottery

symbolizes the blind adherence to a tradition whose roots are not known even by the oldest man

in the small town. Also, the black box shows that the practice does not have a designated place in

the society, which is symbolized by the lack of reverence of the box. There is a lack of a

designated place for storing the box.

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Works Cited

Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” The Lottery and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, 1991.