What Does The Black Box Symbolize In The Lottery

In the story of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” is the tradition that is passed down from one generation to the next that’s accepted and followed blindly without thought, no matter how irreconcilable, or cruel. In the story, Shirley Jackson uses the “black box” to describe the evil side of the tradition. The “black box” represents symbolically for many things such as the death, and outdated tradition. In this story, the black box symbolizes the evil side of the death. The narrator states, every year the towns’ people are gathering for a lottery drawing in the town square. The story originally makes the black box and the lottery seem like something good. People rush to gather for the opportunity to draw their names from the box since usually winning the lottery is a positive thing, but in this case winning the lottery is ironically a bad fortune. Because, the names go into the box and the one that is chosen is not the lucky winner but the one chosen to die. When the paper picked from the black box, it will lead directly to a
It is a tradition that has been taking place in the village for as long as anyone can remember. “There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the lottery” (Jackson, 291). It’s so much a part to the town’s culture and represents both the tradition of the lottery and the illogic of the villagers’ loyalty to it. “Lottery in June, corn is heavy soon” (Jackson, 294). The villagers are fully loyal to it, or, at least, they tell themselves that they are, despite the fact that many parts of the lottery have changed or faded away over the years. Nevertheless, the lottery continues, simply because there has always been a