The Lottery
Symbolism
The Lottery
In Shirley Jackson?s ?The Lottery,? set in a small fictional town on June 27, the townspeople gather to conduct a lottery. At the end of the drawing, one of the townspeople will be dead. The symbols chosen to use are Old Man Warner, the black box, and the stones.
Old Man Warner is the oldest man in the town and he states in the story, ?seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery?; he is the only person to survive the lottery for seventy-seven years. We can look at Old Man Warner as a legend in that town for surviving so many lotteries. He has been in the lottery so long that he can tell how the lottery and the townspeople have changed, from the first time he was in it; he says ?It?s not the way it used to be? and ?People ain?t the way they used to be?.
The black box symbolizes ritual and tradition. The ritual is the sacrifice for the crops each year; the townspeople believe that if they do
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