Symbols In The Lottery

Symbolism In “The Lottery” 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
“The rest of the year, the box was put way, sometimes one place, sometimes another; it had spent one year in Mr. Graves'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” (Jackson 2). This box could possibly represent multiple things, but there's only two that are correct. The black box represents death and evil. This is proved by the fact that the color black means death and one person dies every time they perform the ritual. Secondly, when the box is not in use, it is not respected or liked very much. In the story everyone seems to avoid the box unless they have to go near 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… By now it was no longer completely black, but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained” (Jackson 1-2). These quotes from the text show that the villagers don’t seem to take care of of the black box proving that it is bad and bad most likely means evil. The black box brings an evil or creepy mood to the story and if the box was replaced with a white box the mood would be completely
“Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of paper and put them in the box, and it was then taken to the safe of Mr. Summers coal company and locked up until Mr. Summers was ready to take it to the square next morning” (Jackson 2). The night before the lottery Mr. Graves and Mr. Summers prepared the slips of paper that would be used for the lottery. Mr. graves put the white slip of paper in the box and Mr. Summers put the black dot in the box. “ It had a black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal company office” (Jackson 7). The mood of the word summer is happy and warm, but the word graves provides the mood sad, gloomy, and even death. In the story these words do not mean this. Mr. Summers who was handling the black box and put the black dot in the box seems evil because he handled the evil stuff. On the other hand, Mr. Graves, whose name sounds evil never touched the box or the black dot. He only touches the white slips that represent good and the three legged stool. All in all the different names in the story bring an evil and a happy