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How Does Shirley Jackson Use Symbols In The Rocking Horse Winner

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How Does Shirley Jackson Use Symbols In The Rocking Horse Winner
USE OF SYMBOLS TO CONVEY THEME OF STORY

Use of Symbols by Authors to Help Readers Understand the Theme of Short Stories

Summer Martin

Liberty University Online

Use of Symbols by Authors to Help Readers Understand the Theme of Short Stories

THESIS: The two short stories, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson and "The Rocking Horse Winner" by D. H. Lawrence both use symbols to help the reader understand the theme of the story; however the themes of both stories were completely different, one about love the other the lack of love.

In "The Lottery" and "The Rocking Horse Winner" both authors use symbols to help convey the central message of the story to their readers.

In "The Lottery", Jackson uses the black box to symbolize the villagers ' connection
…show more content…
Falling apart but villagers show no interest in replacing it

The Black box had no significance the rest of the year and could be found in several different locations throughout the town

In "The Rocking Horse Winner", Lawrence uses the whispering house and the rocking horse to show how greed gets you nowhere.

"There must be more money" The house spoke of it often, usually when the children received things that they knew that the family could not afford. They had servants but no car of their own, because they were poor.

Paul thought he could stop the house from whispering if he could win enough money. After giving his mom all of his earnings the house simply got louder. "The voices in the house went mad"

This scared Paul and made him want to get more money. He could no longer hear from the rocking horse. This made him ride it faster and longer. In the end Paul died trying to quiet the whispers in the house.

While both authors used symbolism to convey the message of their stories the themes of the stories could not have been more different.

In "The Lottery" the theme of the story is the lack of love shown by the villagers

The villagers follow custom with no questions

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