Symbolism in Shirley Jacksons The Lottery In short but multi-layered story The Lottery Shirley Jackson emphasizes ides and expresses feelings regarding traditional rituals. The story opens the eyes of readers to properly classify and question some of todays traditions as cruel, and simultaneously foretells the outcome of these unusual traditions. The Lottery is a short story that reveals the annual sacrifice ceremony of a fictional small town. Being a detailed narrative of the selection of the person to be sacrificed, known to the townspeople as the lottery, The Lottery utilizes thoroughly symbolism to make readers aware of the pointless nature of humanity regarding tradition and violence. From the critical point of view, in The Lottery symbolism can be characterized in terms characters names, objects, and numbers. The names of the characters play a significant role in Jacksons techniques of symbolism.
While some names like Delacroix have specifically emphasized religious nature, others like Adams are rather obscure. The Delacroix family has a name that literally stands for the cross. The principal Delacroix character, Mrs. Delacroix, appears several times throughout the short story to function initially as a friend to Tessie Hutchinson, the woman ultimately selected for the sacrifice, and at the end to turn on her along with the rest of the townspeople. Having killed Hutchinson without any reasonable explanation but followed the traditions, Delacroix symbolizes the church in terms of its positive influence and obsolete rituals, foundations and moral principles (Bogart, 46).
The Essay on The dangers of Following Traditions Blindly
... society today. The lottery is a tradition practiced by these villagers to bring luck in their corn growth, by sacrificing a villager. It ... the exact opposite of the actions she portrays. In the story Mrs. Delacroix was the one who picked up the largest stone ... as well. Shirley Jackson uses a great amount of symbolism in the actual lottery itself. She uses the brutal and merciless practices ...
Mr. Adams name, coupled with the fact that he is the first man to draw from the lottery box, biblically indicates that he is a representative of humanity.
Referring to Mr. Adams as the average person, Shirley Jackson makes her story universally applicable to everyone ().
Mr. Summers, the owner of a coal business, manages all the civic activities, including the lottery. His name is an indicator of the lottery itself, through which Jackson makes certain readers know the lottery is an annual tradition. Therefore, through old saying Warner pronounces, Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon (Jackson 75).
Mr. Graves, the town postman, who assists Mr. Summers in directing the ceremony of selecting the unlucky lottery winner, constitutes an integral part of the drawing, and thus his name symbolizes the element of death, eventual part of the lottery process. Being the central idea as well as symbol of the story, the black box refers to a mystery. However, by the end of The Lottery, black color of the box acquires the meaning of death and its inevitability in particular circumstances. Therefore, ones fate lies in an inanimate object, the black box.
Through the image of the box, Shirley Jackson delivers the picture of traditions and rituals associated with the sacrifice. Simultaneously, once the lottery is finished, Mr. Summers brings up the need for a new box and hence new traditions, however the black box keeps becoming threadbare a year after year and 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 76) The condition of the black box reveals the slow transformation and decay of the religious ideals that were the foundation of the lottery concept. Nobody in the little town questions the origin of the black box, accepting it as a tortuous part of life. The passage of time and its detrimental effects are described through the chips of wood used for generations and eventually substituted slips of paper (Jackson 75).
The black spot drawn on the deciding slip of paper is black to symbolize the death it brings. The pieces of paper that are lifted away by the breeze correspond to the fragility of life (Eagan, 84).
The Term Paper on Shirley Jackson Society Life Eleanor
The Irrepressible Individual in the Works of Shirley Jackson Throughout her life, Shirley Jackson struggled with a conflict between her dogged individuality and society's requirement that she adhere to its norms and standards. Jackson saw a second level of human nature, an inner identity lurking beneath the one which outwardly conforms with society's expectations. Society's repression of her ...
On the other hand, paper blown with the wind, represents civilizations that were doomed to eventual failure for believing in and acting on obsolete traditions and rituals. Being stoned to death, Tessie does not question the reasoning behind the lottery, however she does wonder why it should be she that has to die. However, symbols tracked through the image of Tessie Hutchinson are more complex. By incorporating false guilt and protest in Tessie, Jackson conveys two messages: idolization of good old days in American rural life and sacrifice of women. The good old days have terrible secrets and conducted lottery symbolizes the horror that supports the good life (Church, 4).
In addition, the American society depended on womens work and simultaneously demanded that women sacrifice themselves and their ambitions, limiting the scope of interests within a family and children. Jackson starkly portrays the sacrifice that has been a part of the lives of all women. Numbers play many symbolic roles in The Lottery. The stool the black box sits on has three legs, and Tessie Hutchinson has three children. The lottery is held on the twenty -seventh day of June, and the oldest man in the town has been to seventy-seven lotteries. The number three has two-layered nature in The Lottery. The first layer is the Christian concept of the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, Jackson bases the box, and thus the lottery itself, on the Christian concept of religion. In addition, from the critical point of view, the number three also corresponds to three different attitudes of the townspeople toward the lottery. Thus, most of the people seem to be habitual. People participate in the lottery since it was done before them and they do not know any other way. Simultaneously, some townspeople look for some reasonable foundation for the lottery and therefore start to question the tradition. For instance, both Mr. and Mrs. Adams, points out the fact of distant towns who discontinued their lottery (Jackson 77).
The Essay on Lottery Jackson Town One
Shirley Jackson's The Lottery: An Exposition of Conformity in Society The Lottery, a short story by the nonconformist author Shirley Jackson, represents communities, America, the world, and conformist society as a whole by using setting and most importantly symbolism with her inventive, cryptic writing style. It was written in 1948, roughly three years after the liberation of a World War II ...
The third attitude concerning the lottery, hold mainly by older people, is great excitement. Old Man Warner expresses their feelings well when he alleges that those who would discontinue the lottery are a Pack of young fools . Listening to the young folks, nothings good enough for them. Next thing you know, theyll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. First thing you know, wed all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. Theres always been a lottery (Jackson 78).
The date of the lottery, the twenty seventh of June, has significance in various ways. If six, the number of the month, is divided by the two in the twenty-seven, it leaves three and the seven. The seventh chapter of Exodus, the third book of the Bible, talks about the guilt offering, a blood sacrifice made to ease the guilt of a make (Eagan, 91).
Therefore, Jackson links chapters of the Bible to the blood sacrifice the townspeople make in The Lottery. Moreover, the twenty-seven is a strong restructure of the Trinity concept. The seventy-seven years Old Man Warner symbolizes luck. Traditionally number seven is associated with good luck, and the repetition of the numeral highlights corresponds to the fact that he has been lucky to live so long without being chosen as a lottery loser.
Societys future depends on the allowance and acceptance of evolution through its present standpoints. Shirley Jackson utilizes representative names, objects, and numbers to enhance the meaning of the story and highlight religious implications. Jacksons attitude toward the misuse of tradition as an excuse to cause harm or find a scapegoat may have triggered her creativity for the creation of The Lottery. From the critical point of view, the lottery can be compared to known religious traditions, in particular the sacrificing of a virgin to appease the gods in ancient religions, and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Bibliography Jackson, Shirley. The Lottery.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1999 Bogart, Edna. Censorship and The Lottery. English Journal,1985(74), pp. 45-46 Church, Joseph. Getting Taken in The Lottery. Notes on Contemporary Literature, (18)1984, p.4 Eagan, James. Sanctuary: Shirley Jacksons Domestic and Fantastic Parables.
The Essay on Shirley Jacksons The Lottery
Since the beginning of time man has had the internal drive to congregate and form relationships with others. From these relationships societies have evolved, and from the evolution characteristics of humankind have been brought forward. Certain characteristics have been cultivated as acceptable, while others are labeled as unacceptable. Learned evil has become present as a means of survival in ...
Studies in Weird Fiction, (6)1989.
