The Lottery Paragraph

In the short story, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson the author tells a surprising story with a twist. The story is about a small village where there is an annual lottery. A lottery is when one person gets picked out from the community and gets stoned to death by the whole village. Jackson uses symbolism with stones and the names in the story the story to describe and show more detail.

One example of symbolism is the stones. As the story begins, it is a warm summer day and the village is gathering for its annual lottery. At first it seems that the stones are for play because the boys “made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys” (53). In fact, the stones symbolize evil. At the end, they are used as deadly weapons in cruel and senseless death of Tessie. Stones are hard and permanent just like the lottery. Some people in the lottery deserved to get stoned, but a majority of the people don’t and that’s why it is wrong and evil.

The names in the story are another example of symbolism. A few names in the story that show symbolism are Mr. Summers, Mr. Graves. “He was a round-faced jovial man” (54). That description of Mr. Summers sounds kind of like Santa. Santa is a happy, jolly man. I think of happy things when I think of Santa. The name Summers reminds me of the summer: happy, fun, and good times even though he is delivering the bad news in a happy way. On the other hand, Mr. Graves