Imagery In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

The story “The Lottery” has a theme just as any other great story. The author used many different aspects through the story to make one larger theme overall. The theme of this story, is about how the world is full on pointless violence that leads nowhere, as well as how current times seem to still follow the bible. These aspects include the characters, imagery, as well as various symbols. This story tends to refer to the bible quite often. One example of the story referring to the bible is when the author writes about the black box. The villagers talk about getting a new black box, but never do as part of tradition. This is just as how for thousands of years Christians have been using the same bible. Another example of symbolism
For example, “The people had done it so many times that they only half listened to the directions: most of them were quiet, wetting their lips” (Shirley, 3). This is important to the story because the wetting of their lips alludes to wild animals, such as wolves. Wolves and people can both be friendly, until they’re put into a crowd or ‘pack’. Just as wolves, these people were waiting in anticipation to see whom they get to kill. Another form of imagery in this story is when Old man Warner snorted, “Pack of crazy fools… Next thing you know they’ll go back to living in caves… There’s always been a lottery,” (Shirley, 3). This goes to show how even in today’s world there are elderly that, despite have being children at one point, are just annoyed with children and their
This is interesting because they’re not really winning the lottery like how we do. They were winning the guaranteed chance of survival for themselves, and their families. “Daughters draw with their husband’s family” (Shirley, 4). This portion of the story, shows that (at least during this era) that men had more saying over their wives. The author also did an amazing job at foreshadowing the end of the book. The whole section of Tessie wanting to draw with her father, and the way she was saying what she did, made her seem to be feared. Another form of foreshadowing, was the children gathering the rocks. Foreshadowing was a great way for the author to hint to the end of the story. The way the story was set up, with not knowing about the stoning until the very end, creates a shocking twist of events. In conclusion, Shirley used many forms of imagery, symbolism and allegories throughout her story. Everything from alluding the bible to showing how unfair the world really is. Full of pointless violence and even