Introduction
Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery is a short story that tells about a fictional village where people are gathered for an annual lottery, in which all the villagers take part. The lottery has been held for many years as a tradition, and the tickets are drawn to select one person who will be stoned to death by other villagers. The writer builds the tension throughout the short story to unfold the real purpose of the lottery at the very end of the narrative. The author manages to incorporate multiple symbols that represent the cruelty of social order, war, and injustices being blindly accepted by people unless it concerns them personally. This paper is designed to conduct a literary analysis of the short story by Shirley Jackson and interpret its symbolic meaning that remains relevant to this day.
Symbolism in The Lottery
As the title implies, the lottery is an important symbol in the story. On the background of multiple descriptive details opening the narration, the violence of the lottery has an increased emotional impact on readers. On the one hand, the lottery represents war and death. Indeed, at the time when Shirley Jackson “published her story (three years after the end of World War II), the vicious images of destruction and mass murder were still fresh in the readers’ memory” (Ismael and Sabah 29). Another interpretation of its symbolism is the injustice as tradition and long-established social order, which nobody wants to break (Turkie 15). People act collectively, abiding by the cruel rules of the lottery, invented long ago, and no one remembers when and why.
The concept of the lottery has a deeper symbolic meaning due to the application of the phenomenon of lottery to the killing of Mrs. Hutchinson. Indeed, given that the lottery represents injustice in society, the chances of being so-called lucky are distributed across the members of the community. However, it is only one representative who is exposed to being beaten to death with rocks (Jackson). Indeed, the lottery and the repetitive comments of Mrs. Hutchinson that this is not right and not fair might be interpreted as the representation of racism and discrimination of women (Landau 19). Fairness as a lottery is depicted to be a subjective and manipulated matter.
Another important symbolic element in the short story that helps to unfold the criticism of unreasonable traditions and social order is the black box, in which the lottery tickets are held. It is repeatedly described in a manner that transcends mysterious control over people’s destiny, although the villagers had long lost the original box, from which the tradition of the lottery began (Jackson 5-6). Thus, the black box represents the irresistible power of tradition, the meaning of which is forgotten and only a blind, senseless abiding follows.
Moreover, the symbolism of stones is also inherent to the short story since the stones appear at the very beginning of the narration, when children collect them before the lottery. This process first seems like a mere childish game, which is perceived peacefully and joyfully given the description of the setting the author gives at the beginning. However, as the ending of the story demonstrates, stones represent the means of cruelty, a mediator between cruel villagers and the victim, the so-called winner of the lottery. Children participate in the lottery, which indicates that the adults pass on the violent traditions to future generations. Therefore, as Turkie states, “the purpose of the lottery is to make the social body pure from any endeavor to resist social codes and to make capitalist regime immortal” (16). Thus, global social and political issues are expressed through the use of symbolism.
The ending of the short story is central to the main idea of the whole text. When describing the final scene, the narrator states that “a stone hit her on the side of the head” (Jackson 7). Moreover, the very last phrase of the short story, “and then they were upon her,” does not explicitly state whether people or stones, implying the merge of both in an irresponsible action of murder (Jackson 7). Such an impersonal phrase suggests the symbolism of stones as the lack of villagers’ responsibility for their actions since they are merely abiding by the rules of the centuries-long tradition.
Conclusion
In summation, as the literary analysis of the symbolism in Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery shows, the author effectively used symbolism to deliver the theme of social injustice and the vicious circle of human rights violation secluded in the form of tradition. Jackson incorporated the symbolic representation of war and social injustice in the phenomenon of lottery, old irrelevant traditions in the symbol of the black box, and cruelty and the lack of responsibility for it represented through stones. Thus, the symbols in the short story allow for unfolding the social, political, and philosophical implications of the narrative, which remain relevant to contemporary society even after more than half a century after the work was published.
Works Cited
Ismael, Zaid Ibrahim, and Sabah Atallah Khalifa Ali. “Human Rights at Stake: Shirley Jackson’s Social and Political Protest in “The Lottery”.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, vol. 7, no. 6, 2018, pp. 28-36.
Jackson, Shirley. The Lottery, Web.
Landau, Samantha. “Occult Influences in Shirley Jackson’s’’The Lottery’’.” Gakuen, vol. 936, 2018, pp. 11-21.
Turkie, Mays Salman. “Dystopian Society in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” International Journal of Research in Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 9, no. 1, 2019, pp. 15-20.