The Lottery By Shirley Hutchinson Analysis
“The Lottery (1948)” by Shirley Jackson, is a short story about an annual lottery taking place in a small New England town. Every year the lottery is held and the winner of the lottery is then promptly stoned to death. This lottery has been a long held tradition in this small town and it is a tradition that everyone in the town must take part in. The man in charge of the lottery drawing, Mr. Summers, calls each male head of household forward to an ominous looking black box sitting atop a three legged stool. Then they must select a small piece of paper from inside the box. After the men have chosen, they are allowed to open the paper and see who is selected. This year, Bill Hutchinson is selected and then the lottery redraws again with just
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The black box is used to draw the pieces of paper during the lottery and it is resting on a three-legged stool. The black box can be seen a symbol of the key between life and death for every person in the town. It embodies the evil acts that have taken place in the past and the ones to come. The black box is ancient, having been passed on through the generations, but none of the townspeople attempt to make repairs to it. They let it grow old, almost falling apart in its state, but are unwilling to break the traditions upheld in this town to make repairs to it. Perhaps the townspeople are scared of it and do not want to make contact with the box, that the box is unlucky holding all the evil surrounding the lottery within it. This makes it seem that the townspeople do not want to touch or even think of this black box all throughout the year until it is the day of the lottery. Even the color of the black box is a universal symbol for death and evil. The old box represents the tradition of the lottery itself. Not even the oldest man in the town knows how the lottery began, but they keep following with it, because it is what they have been taught and has always been done in previous
The black box is used to draw the pieces of paper during the lottery and it is resting on a three-legged stool. The black box can be seen a symbol of the key between life and death for every person in the town. It embodies the evil acts that have taken place in the past and the ones to come. The black box is ancient, having been passed on through the generations, but none of the townspeople attempt to make repairs to it. They let it grow old, almost falling apart in its state, but are unwilling to break the traditions upheld in this town to make repairs to it. Perhaps the townspeople are scared of it and do not want to make contact with the box, that the box is unlucky holding all the evil surrounding the lottery within it. This makes it seem that the townspeople do not want to touch or even think of this black box all throughout the year until it is the day of the lottery. Even the color of the black box is a universal symbol for death and evil. The old box represents the tradition of the lottery itself. Not even the oldest man in the town knows how the lottery began, but they keep following with it, because it is what they have been taught and has always been done in previous