Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”: The use of Symbolism and Themes
In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery”, she demonstrates how a small town uses religious traditions that are cruel and unusual but are part of their culture.
Jackson lets us know the time of the lottery at the outset of the story. From the description of the men’s talk of “tractors and taxes” and the depiction of Mr. Summers wearing a “clean white shirt and blue jeans”, we may assume that we are in the twentieth century, making the story’s impact more immediate. (Yarmove 242) The story takes place in a small town containing only 200 villagers who have an unusual religious custom. In her story, the “lottery” is a time of two hours every June, where everyone from the town
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I personally like this because it gives a little confusion. The first line says, “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green” (Jackson 1). Jackson starts it out this way to set a plot that is happy and normal, which I believe she uses to symbolize how comfortable and normal the ritual is to the villagers. It states that “in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o 'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner”(Jackson 1). By her saying this, it shows how accustomed they are to something so cruel and unusual such as a stoning. I believe she did an outstanding job connecting the setting of the day to the mood of the …show more content…
It wasn’t until I read it a few times that I actually understood how she uses them. Class and Society play a big role in the story. It makes us think about traditions that we follow without thinking about it. The random distribution of the paper means that some are fortunate and some aren’t. It’s significant that paper replaced the wood chips just as paper money replaced gold and other goods. When it comes to the paper in the lottery or the paper in our pockets, paper can mean good or bad fortune. One theme that I keep bringing up is tradition. This story tells us of how the annual practice of this tradition is like how we celebrate holidays. We have multiple traditions and costumes like the lottery. We don’t know when it started or when it will end, but we continue anyways. And this tradition has a strong hold on the villagers, they are too afraid of rebelling and going against it. But the story shows that other villages are getting rid of the lottery, showing how the tradition has become meaningless over
The setting of the story helps to magnify its impact on the reader because it is set in a small town similar to the one many of us may know of, and that is symbolic of everything that we consider to be right in America. The story begins on a wonderful summer day in a small town. The author describes the day as very joyful but strikes a contrast between the surroundings of the town and the atmosphere of the people gathered in the square. The atmosphere is sober, where the adults ?stood together, away from the stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather then laughed."(268) This, in just the third paragraph, is a indication through symbolism of the townsfolk?s sober mood that something was amiss. The setting for the lottery also takes place in the same place as the square dances, the teen-age club, and the Halloween program.(268) This unifies our lives with those of the story sense we can relate to those types of events, and is symbolic in showing that even though this dastardly deed happens here that it is still the main place of celebration. Showing how easy it is for us, as human beings, to clean our conscientious by going back to a place that, on June 27, is a place of death and make it a place of delight.
“The Lottery,” written by Shirley Jackson in 1948, is a provoking piece of literature about a town that continues a tradition of stoning, despite not know why the ritual started in the first place. As Jackson sets the scene, the villagers seem ordinary; but seeing that winning the lottery is fatal, the villagers are then viewed as murders by the reader. Disagreeing with the results of the lottery, Tessie Hutchinson is exposed to an external conflict between herself and the town. Annually on June 27th, the villagers gather to participate in the lottery. Every head of household, archetypally male, draws for the fate of their family, but Tessie protests as she receives her prize of a stoning after winning the lottery. Jackson uses different symbols – symbolic characters, symbolic acts, and allegories – to develop a central theme: the
The fascinating story of “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson has symbolism throughout the text that reveals how every man is for himself and how society as a whole is flawed. Although individual characters in the story seem to aspire to want to change the tradition in their society, they very quickly go back to their human instincts of survival of the fittest. Interesting enough, the black box symbolizes the tight tradition the society follows even though it is not the original box, “The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago…” (52). The black box is a powerful symbol that showcases how humans are instinctive to hold on to only what they know even if they don’t know why they are doing it, “Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box” (52). Another instinctive symbolism in “The Lottery” are the stones.
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is a chilling tale of a harsh ritualistic gathering conducted by people of a small village. The word lottery would typically remind someone of a drawing to win a cash prize. A better comparison to the story would be the lottery used to select troops for the Vietnam War; a lottery of death. Another would be the human sacrifices the Aztecs willingly made long ago.
Shirley Jackson wrote many books in her life, but she was well known by people for her story “The Lottery” (Hicks). “The Lottery” was published on June 28, 1948, in the New Yorker magazine (Schilb). The story sets in the morning of June 27th in a small town. The townspeople gather in the square to conduct their annual tradition, the Lottery. The winner of the lottery will stoned to death by the society. Although there is no main character in the story, the story develops within other important elements. There are some important elements of the story that develop the theme of the story: narrator and its point of view, symbolism, and main conflict. The story “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson, argues practicing a tradition without understanding the meaning of the practice is meaningless and dangerous.
Jackson starts off the story by telling us, what a beautiful day it was she seems almost luring us and creating this false presentation. She uses irony rather flawlessly to create an element of surprise. “The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o 'clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 2th. But in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o 'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.” (Jackson) As we begin to read further on, we start to see how impeccably she shows irony, they have the lottery done in time for them to
Jackson uses the lottery itself to function as an ironic symbol of tradition in the story. In today’s society, a lottery is an event that has positive connotations related to it. A lottery a game that is associated with fun, chance, fun, and expectation. Good things usually result from lotteries especially for those who win. Furthermore, those who don’t win have nothing to lose. Lotteries bring forth a feeling of great expectation of a wonderful outcome. Through out the story, the lottery is projected as a harmless and affable pastime, which is how it is used in today’s society; however, by the end of the story it ends with disaster.
Tradition is huge in small towns and families and allows for unity through shared values, stories, and goals from one generation to the next. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” carries that theme of tradition. The story follows a small town that performs the tradition of holding an annual lottery in which the winner gets stoned to death. It (tradition) is valued amongst human societies around the world, but the refusal of the villagers in “The Lottery” to let go of a terrifying long-lasting tradition suggests the negative consequences of blindly following these traditions such as violence and hypocrisy.
Jackson uses the lottery's conductor Mr. Summers and also Mr. Graves whom oversees the lottery, together to symbolize life versus death, new ideas versus traditional ways. Most simply, Mr. Summers represents the season of which the lottery takes place, June 27th. Summer is known to be full of life and growth which is very similar to Mr. Summer's personality. He is described as a cheerful, jovial man wearing a clean, white shirt and jeans. Mr. Graves' name on the other hand refers to...
Even through the times, traditions have remained a constant for the human race. They can be as gruesome as the Aztecs practicing human sacrifice to as simple as saying the pledge of allegiance every day. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a chilling story about the reoccurrence of an abhorrent ritual that takes place on a sunny morning. The people of this village demonstrate fear over straying from conformity and thus have the ignorance that sprouts from never trying new things. Through this short story the author portrays this fear and ignorance the human race has through her casual narration, euphemistic dialogue and morbid events.
The objects in the story also represent religious and symbolic meanings to the lottery. This sentence “ Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones;” (Jackson,2) shows that young kids were picking up smooth stones. Most rocks are jagged, knife-like, and tapered. The reason they were picking up the smoothest stones because jagged rocks would most
Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery” is a short story about the annual gathering of the villagers to conduct an ancient ritual. The ritual ends in the stoning of one of the residents of this small village. This murder functions under the guise of a sacrament that, at one time, served the purpose of ensuring a bountiful harvest. This original meaning, however, is lost over the years and generations of villagers. The loss of meaning has changed the nature and overall purpose of the lottery. This ritual is no longer a humble sacrifice that serves the purpose of securing the harvest but instead is a ceremony of violence and murder only existing for the pleasure found in this violence.
At the beginning of the story it starts out seeming like an ordinary civilized community where everyone gets along. In the first sentence of the story “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.”(Jackson). Even though the towns people knew what day it was and what happens on July 27th they had no problem with gathering in the town center to get the lottery under way. The kids would start gathering first, then the men, and then the women and they all would present themselves wearing nice cloths as if attending a special event. This became such a tradition that people even forgot about it and this is made evident when Mrs. Hutchinson said “and then I looked out the window and the kids was gone, and then I remembered it was the twenty-seventh and came a-running" (Jackson). Mrs. Hutchinson had put a target on her back from then on because she was seen as an outsider or not normal because she had joined the group late. “The villagers’ blind acceptance of the lottery has allowed ritual murder to become part of their town fabric.” (Sparknote
"The Lottery" utilizes an objective third-person perspective to create suspense and foreshadow the ending. It begins by introducing a village and its people on a "clear and sunny" morning, "with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day" (NA, 781), with people finishing their tasks in order to gather for an annual town lottery. The narrator describes the community in a manner similar to that of an observant visitor. When the children leave school for the summer, with the boys gathering stones and the girls talking aside them, the reader is comforted by the light-hearted atmosphere of the village. It seems like a normal, idyllic town with simple people that seem stereotypic of a small rural community, where the men are absorbed in talking about "planting and rain, tractors and taxes"(NA, 781) and the women gather to exchange "bits of gossip" (NA, 782). In the beginning, the reader discovers that as opposed to larger towns that also hold the lottery, this village could finish the event in late morning and "still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner" (NA, 781). Mr. Summer, who carries out the drawing and who is described as a "round-faced, jovial man" (NA, 782), adds to the sense of normality in the town and upcoming lottery.
Would you believe that there was once a village where everyone would partake in a terrible event, but think it was innocent because of how they blindly followed a tradition? The short story, “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson communicates this theme by showing how the villagers participate in a lottery every year. In life, there are people who follow tradition because they have to, or they are used to following without question. The author, Shirley Jackson, was born on December 14, 1916 in San Francisco, California. In 1937, Shirley Jackson attended Syracuse University where she began to write short stories.