Symbols of “The Lottery”

Author’s Note: This is a text analysis piece using symbols on the short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson.

            The short story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is about a small village in the middle of nowhere. In this village, there is a tradition that every year, one person is chosen to be killed by their fellow villagers in some inhuman way. The belief of the village is that the men are better or more prized than the women. So, the man of the family is the one to choose the family's fate.  Symbols in a story can affect the way that the reader interprets their meaning.  


            I found that there were many symbols in reading this book. Some of the symbols were the black dot on the paper to symbolize death, or when the children piled rocks so they could eventually kill the one unlucky person in the whole village. In this story, winning the lottery by drawing the black dot would mean eventual sorrow because of death, when in real life, if you were to win the lottery it likely would mean riches and a life of happiness. The rocks in this story can be construed as another death symbol but, I saw them as a kind of last hurrah. Everyone in the village knew that if you were to draw the black dot, you were going to die. So, the rocks were a way to show that by throwing them at a person, they can die knowing that everyone was there to witness the last seconds of their lives.

            A book that I thought had the same kind of symbolism was the "Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins. In this book, the tributes' names are picked from a bowl.  Their names are written in black ink on a piece of paper. It is similar to "The Lottery" because they picked from a box, and if they pick a black dot, it means death, much like it did in the "Hunger Games". Also, in the "Hunger Games", photos of the tributes that died were shown in the sky at night, kind of celebrating their death. Just like in "The Lottery", the rocks are kind of a celebration of the person being killed.  

            Other people might think differently than I did, but there are many different ways to interpret a piece like this. They could have seen the other village as a new future for the coming generations. Shirley Jackson could have been thinking that the traditions followed in her time could be considered silly in present day. The symbols within this book did not really point in any definitive direction on where the author was going with this story.