Cruelty And Symbolism In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

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In “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson describe June 27, the day the lottery is held as a normal everyday life for the towns people in a small town called Anytown, USA, in the story Jackson addresses the day of the lottery as a normal quite and pleasant day. In my opinion the lottery is a cruel bizarre tradition that note of the towns people thought to question the ritual on why an individual get stoned to death their very own towns people. Jackson uses simple objects to symbolize cruelty and unfairness to human life. In the beginning Jackson describes how the children were getting out of school the girls talking among themselves and the boys gathering stones. The stones symbolize horrific murder weapons. As the boys are collecting the stones they…show more content…
In the story Mr. Graves help little Davvy select from the box. If a child draw from the black box and get the one with the dot he/she will be the one to get stone. Also brother and sister, Nancy and Bill Hutchison are laughing as people draw from the box. Little do they know that it will be out of there own parents to determine who will get the black dot and it turns out to be there mother Tessi. As Tessi drew from the box Mr. Hutchison is the one to show everybody that it is Tessi who drew the black dot and he does not stand up for his wife at all. He went along with the ritual like every one else did. Even if it was a child no one will show any type of sympathy because it is a traditional ritual that every one must had to participate in. Consequently the color black is mentioned repeatedly through out” The Lottery”. Evil or death represents the box based solely on the color. The black box is described as an ancient box that has been around for a long period of time, which holds the tickets for the lottery. The town’s people show loyalty to the black box. The black box has no reason of being use but only once a year for two hours every June. “It had spent on year in Mr. Grave’s barn and another year underfoot in the post office and sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there”
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