Preview

What Are The Symbols In The Lottery

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
559 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
What Are The Symbols In The Lottery
Themes/Symbols of The Lottery” and “The Things They Carried”

In the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson there are many themes. However, the main theme of the short story is following a tradition blindly can be deadly. Tradition in societies and culture allows for important lessons and skills to be passed on from generation to generation. However, following others without questioning what is going on or the reason why your doing it in the first place, can lead to reckless and impulsive behavior. Although the tradition in the small village remained the same the rituals gradually changed . For example the lottery determines each year whether you live or die. This indicates how dangerous tradition can be when people blindly follow

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The Lottery, a short story by Shirley Jackson is about the mystery of the black box. “Lottery in June, Corn be heavy soon.” Every year there is a Lottery, which takes place in small towns for crops to grow fast and properly. The author included many symbols throughout the story, which foreshadowed the dark ending. There was a lot of symbolism portrayed throughout the story, from the beginning to the end, weather it was through names, objects, or phrases. The names used in the story strongly foreshadowed the ending. For example: Mr.Dellacroix, Mr.Graves, and Mr.Warner. Each of the names relate to something, which gives the audience a clue that something dark and heavy is going to happen. Dellacroix is a French name it means of…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In her story “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson, utilizes symbolism to underline the importance of questioning tradition. Her story, “The Lottery,” begins in a small intimate village of about 300 people. In this little village, tradition is important because it must be practiced in order to help get better crops throughout the year. The way these crops are produce is by one person getting sacrificed via stoning once every year, and that is led by Mr. Summers. Though this tradition is practiced yearly, not everyone in this village is content about the sacrificial aspect of this tradition, creating conflict in the story when Mrs. Tessie Hutchinson, the one being sacrificed, chooses to rebel against this established institution tradition. Though she…

    • 168 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Great post, after reading “The Lottery” another time I believed that the short has a lot of symbolism that criticize the Christianity and many other religious traditions, for instant the black box symbolizes the Bible, the three legged stool symbolized the trinity for Christians and other various religious traditions like the three Norse Fates and the stones relates to the text in the Bible about the woman who was caught in the act of adultery John 8:1-11.…

    • 88 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In The Lottery one way that the danger of blindly following traditions can eventually lead to you being cruel is seen through setting in the second paragraph “Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones” and “…eventually made a great piles of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raid of other boys”. The theme is seen through setting,…

    • 440 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the short story “The Lottery”, Shirley Jackson uses symbolism to describe how being oblivious towards the meaning a tradition can lead to dangerous consequences. The box used in the lottery symbolizes an old tradition that the villagers follow. Though “the original paraphernalia for the lottery has been lost long ago” (pg195) and “the villagers [have] forgotten the ritual” (pg201), “they still [remember] to use stones” (pg201) during the execution portion of the lottery. However, the villagers do not know how this started; they just know that “there’s always been a lottery” (pg198), even before Old Man Warner was born. This shows how the villagers are blindly following a tradition that involves the death of a person without knowing why…

    • 238 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Symbolism in the Lottery

    • 259 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In addition, the only man in the story who seems to recognize this tradition is Old Man Warner. When Mrs. Adams mentions that other towns have quit doing the lottery, he adds “nothing but trouble in that,” and calls the, “young fools.” He has survived the lottery for 77 years, and seems to know that you don’t mess with a ritual. A lottery is completely by chance, and there is no way it is fair or unfair. When Tessie fights the ritual and ends up being stoned to death, it shows that you must remain faithful to your tradition, which seems to be the entire moral of the…

    • 259 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    As society changes, some traditions evolve, but some remain stagnant. Tradition is a substantial part of our life today, but decades ago it was a lifestyle. Anyone with an objection to a tradition was met with dire consequences. In “The Lottery,” the fortunate or in this case the unfortunate winner would be stoned to death. “The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock” (Jackson 1). This quote shows that the lottery runs on tried-and-true process, and the whole town passionately followed the ritual. The participants were of the view that the sacrifice would bring in bountiful corn during harvest time. In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson proficiently uses distinctive setting…

    • 555 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    (Introduction) “The Lottery,” a short story by Shirley Jackson, is about a woman who has been selected for sacrifice by a lottery drawing. Tessie Hutchinson, and the rest of her town, are unfeeling about how the annual sacrifice affects the selected. However, they carry on with their tradition year after year, with no intent to make changes to meet modern day morals and needs. “The Lottery” is about blindly following tradition, the awareness of how cruel a practice sacrificing is, and how one’s mindset can change when they are the chosen one.…

    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Lottery, a short story written by Shirley Jackson explains two of the most important aspects of humanity: traditions and rituals. The story takes place in a small town in New England where every year a lottery is held, most people would relate lottery to wining cash. In this lottery one person will be randomly choose to be stoned to death by the people in the village including their own family members. The lottery has been practiced for over seventy years by the townspeople and even though the villagers do not know the purpose of this tradition or the origin of it, they keep it to show respect to their ancestors ignoring the fact that is cruel and it is turning the whole village into murderers.…

    • 656 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Symbolism in the Lottery

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Symbolism can help bring out true meaning in a story. It can describe information that may be hidden from the reader in the story. In The Lottery, the black box used to draw paper for the lottery is what best symbolizes the meaning of the story. The black box is the main symbol in The Lottery because it represents the tradition of the lottery that no one wants to change.…

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” it is evident that conforming to society and sticking with tradition can lead to outweighing personal morals./be a burden on the lives of people. Although The Lottery was a tradition that has been occurring for years, nobody sticks up to support their morals to challenge The Lottery. Not only does The Lottery limit the rights of many, but many other expectations in their society do too.…

    • 437 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The short story by Shirley Jackson “The Lottery” serves as a mirror to see our own society and rituals at an extreme. Throughout the story the author normalizes the characters’ inhumane ritual so the reader would be able to understand the underlining meaning of the story. In our society there are rituals that we do not dare to question because they have been embedded into our lives. The character Old Man Warner justifies such rituals by saying, on page 142, “There’s always been a lottery.” he himself not entirely understanding why it is done. Shirley Jackson wants the reader to understand how oblivious society is to itself, and shows how it would be if it were to be looked upon in an outer perspective.…

    • 797 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is often said that there is strength in numbers. While it is true that a large group of people has more power than an individual, a single person within a large group will almost always conform in some way. This weakens the individual and leads to fewer new ideas in order to maintain group status and agreement. Many times, rituals or ideas are allowed and accepted just because they are favored by a majority or have been part of that society for so long that they have become almost like a tradition. In "The Lottery", Shirley Jackson uses alarming images to guide the reader to understand the futility and foolishness of blind obedience to these rituals. The lottery “selection” emphasizes the importance of questioning what is right in front of you instead of just conforming mindlessly.…

    • 566 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is nothing less than a powerful story about a society that gathers once per year and holds a lottery. But this is not a lottery with a winner; it is a lottery with a loser. “The Lottery” is a chilling story because it depicts a sense of normalcy among the towns’ people when they randomly decided to kill a neighbor by practically just drawing straws. This story really asks the question, are rituals always a good thing? If rituals are a good or bad thing do we even know why we do it half the time? “The Lottery”, shows us that even though tradition may have been happening for years doesn’t mean that the traditions we choose to follow are beneficial.…

    • 1062 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Symbols In The Lottery

    • 1144 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Everyone in the world has or will experience the death of best friends or loved ones. No matter what anyone does, they can’t overpower death. Our world is full of it, whether it is natural death, killing, or even suicide, and the town in Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery” is not any different. In this short story one person is brutally murdered every year just so they possibly will have a good harvest. The Villagers pull slips from a black box and the one that picks the slip with the black dot gets stoned to death. Adults and children are forced to kill one of their own family and friends on June 27, but they seem to know it is important. They attend this ritual, forgetting more about it every year. In the short story…

    • 1144 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays