The Lottery by Shirley Jackson | Symbols

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Course Hero Literature Instructor Russell Jaffe explains the symbols in Shirley Jackson's short story The Lottery.

Download the free study guide and infographic for The Lottery here:
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With deceptive simplicity, Shirley Jackson's short story The Lottery slowly builds from an apparently banal scenario to one that illustrates the horrors that result from mindless groupthink.

The residents of a bucolic American country town gather for a ritual in which one of their number will be selected for symbolic slaughter.

As they exchange pleasantries and mundane observations, clues start to creep in as to the purpose of this sinister congregation.

Set during midsummer, a time of pagan significance with associations of both celebration and sacrifice, references to the stones that will be used to eliminate the unlucky scapegoat start to pile up along with casual references to past lotteries.

This is made all the more menacing by the participants' unthinking adherence to the barbaric tradition: occasional murder is as prosaic as Fourth of July fireworks to these people.

American writer Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery was first published in 1948. Jackson's eerie stories and novels explore abnormal psychology and domestic horror. The Lottery established her as a writer of Gothic tales and unsettling novels.

The short horror story includes many powerful symbols such as stones symbolizing an ancient and primal force, the black box representing a solemn tradition to which the town clings, and households symbolizing family units that determine the fates in the lottery. Important themes include conformity, tradition and ritual, and the banality of evil.

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