Writing through Literature

La Guardia Community College

Fall 2006, Session 1

Prof. Dr. David Sibbit

Essay #1 – Symbolism in “The Lottery”

Final Draft

December 12, 2006

Jesica Islas

Jesica Islas

Essay #1 First Draft

ENG 102.5820

Prof. Sibbitt

People Follow Others Example and Not Common Sense

The author of “The Lottery” wrote this story “to shock the story’s readers with a graphic demonstration of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives” (Jackson 211). This story reflects human behavior in society to show how although rules, laws or traditions do not make sense, people follow them. Throughout the story the three main symbols of how people blindly follow senseless traditions were the lottery itself, the color black, and the hesitation that people had towards the prize.

The lottery in the story was the game in which the prize was death. In reality this lottery symbolized the game of life, and how our behavior as human beings influences our choices in life and therefore our destiny. In this case the lottery signified winning eternal peace. This symbol helped the author develop the meaning of the story, because it is all based on the game of winning or losing. The way people from the village conducted the lottery was kind of scary, because they organized it as if it was another important event, such as the “square dances, the teenage club, the Halloween program” (Jackson 212). This shows how this tradition was taken as seriously as other occurrences that took place in the village. A person with some logic would not find this to be exactly a “game”, but the population followed the tradition and did not even think about the possibility to drop it, because then they would not know what to do, or what other event would they organize for June 27th. During the lottery Mr. Adams said “some places have already quit the lotteries” as of insinuating that if the neighbor towns forgot about the tradition, they should not have to keep following it (215). The bad thing is that no one paid attention to him, because they were all scared of a change. At the beginning nobody wanted to finish the game, but once one through the first stone, all of them followed, until the winner felt down dead.

The black color of the box and the black spots on the “winners” piece of paper symbolized people need for brightness in their mind, with this tradition they demonstrated the darkness that they had, because they did not care that they had to kill one of their neighbors just because of a tradition. They needed to see the light, but did not want to, because when at least one of them wanted a change, no one followed. Black helps the author develop the meaning of the story because it could also represent the unfairness that this game had towards its society, because in the real lottery you win something worthwhile, but there is nothing worthwhile about winning death. This is like obligating the society to kill one of its friends and this was unfair and cruel. The black dot in the village is such as the winning number in our society, it signifies the “winning person” but in this specific case it represents the name of the person destine to die, it is ironic to use the word destine in this case, because destine is what God have prepare for us, but if you are going to die because of other people rules is just could be call cruelty. At the beginning people residing in the village were all exited because of the game, but then when the time came, and Tessy Hutchinson’s husband gets the black dot, her reaction was “You didn’t give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn’t fair!” (216). If this is the reaction they are going to have when it is their call, why do they keep the tradition in the first place? Isn’t that ironic? They should just drop the tradition and live happily as a community, without having to kill one of their neighbors or get killed just because they are scare of a change in their traditional lives.

The third symbol is the hesitation, people showed when the time came for Tessy Hutchinson to die. Hesitation is the only normal thing in the story, being that the whole game of the lottery seems to be abnormal, hesitation is normal in people, when the time about killing somebody comes. When the winner or loser was announced, the people could not believe who it was; and when it was time to give Tessy her prize, the people hesitated, not knowing how to start, so first they did not wanted to give her the price, but then when the first person through a stone, they all played alone with it. The author uses this symbol to help readers relate the story to their everyday life more easily. In society people may think something is wrong but if they see a bunch of people doing it they’ll go ahead and do it themselves. At the end of the story, when the winner was picked, the narrator says “A stone hit her on the side of the head” (Jackson 217). This quote refers that nobody saw who was the first one to hit her but as soon as the stone hit her head ¨then they were upon her” (218). People at first were unsure whether to start throwing the stones or not, but as soon as one threw the first one, they all followed without hesitation.

This story had a graphical representation that seemed to be abnormal or incoherent in the way it was presented, because in our society it is not normal and it is against the law to have a game in which the prize is death, but although it is not normal and against the law it happens in our everyday life. Although we do not have this kind of tradition anymore (within the United States,) we do have other rules, or laws, which instead of help people, it kills them little by little and some people decide to take justice in their hands. For example in some foreign countries the laws allow government to punish criminals by publically humiliating them and allowing other people to hurt them. In some foreign cultures the punishment for infidelity is to be publically humiliated by been beating up by some of the leaders of their community. If we go back to “The Lottery” it was the same thing as other countries keep on doing it today. The kind of humiliation and the whole game of the story represented in a way the reality that we have in our society.

Works Cited

Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery”. Literature an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama.

4th Compact ed. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Longman, 2005. 211-218.