The Lottery Symbolism

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Pick 3: The Lottery’s Symbolism In the “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, she uses numerous objects and traits as symbolism to the story. The color black, the character’s names, and the title itself “The Lottery”. Jackson uses these symbols for many believed reasons to connect with the story First, the color black is the color of the box; which is the main object in the short story. The box is feared, because it determines what happens in the end. When thinking about the color black, death comes to mind. If not death, then something maybe scary, or dark. Which makes sense for the black box, because it holds the name of who will die at the end of the story. Also, black comes up again when Mrs. Hutchinson’s name is pulled with the black dot. “Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of …show more content…
Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the coal company office” (Jackson 242). With the black dot on her name, she was the chosen one, the one to be stoned. From reading the story the color black stands out most, but it stands out for a reason. The reason being, death, when there is black, there is death. For instance, funerals, most of the mourners wear black, because someone has died. So, again, black is the color of death and Jackson chose black for the color of the box, to let readers know what the box stood for. Next symbols shown in “The lottery”, would be the names of the characters. The names may be symbols, compared to what the story is about. Starting with who seems to be the main character Mr. Summers, hence that the story takes place during the summer. Summer is known as joyful, and cheery, although Mr. Summers does seem to be all these things throughout the book, he is also the one that put the dot on Mrs. Hutchinson’s name. “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 242). Mr. Graves is also a curious character name for
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