Symbolism In The Lottery By Shirley Jackson
It’s just the simple act of picking one of the many pieces of paper from a black box, one of which contains the dot that speaks of its drawer’s destiny…
Question is, is it an act or a choice—or, if it were possible, destiny itself?
But if one would stop and think—and lay aside the ironies of a tragic death through a single tragic mistake—and look into—and, similarly, look through—the eyes of Tessie Hutchinson, her husband Bill, her son Davy, and all the other people in their town, one would stop short to have found out that their minds are a clear mirror of one’s own. Clearly, the story is but a simple twist in the nature of man that man himself has tried to magnify.
In the beginning, the characters in the story are we, the bored, uninteresting …show more content…
It is a routine that we go through that who could have thought would come out the way it always does, a routine with an end of which we have often seen with our own eyes, but would also shock the undiscerning. And then the end nears…and we still don’t care. We draw our lot, and it is clean—as if our own souls are, that is—big deal, we put the piece of paper in our pocket and it is immediately forgotten. And then the end springs at us…we look the person who’s drawn the dotted lot—look him as if our own souls are anything but the piece of paper he has picked—with stranger’s eyes. We stone him to death, we forget who he is—friend, family member, father, son, husband…and he dies. We go about our chores again and walk and talk as if our civil hands were clean and leave the slaughtered lamb with a triumphant smile because we have won again, we did not draw the cursed lot, he did. It doesn’t matter who ‘he’ is—as long as it’s not we. Our own eyes have beheld the same old scene, but the heart only remembers—and doesn’t feel. We do not care if it would be we who would die next year, as long as we are left living today. We see not nor expect the time of our own downfall—we caused the downfall of another one today and it’s what matters at the
Question is, is it an act or a choice—or, if it were possible, destiny itself?
But if one would stop and think—and lay aside the ironies of a tragic death through a single tragic mistake—and look into—and, similarly, look through—the eyes of Tessie Hutchinson, her husband Bill, her son Davy, and all the other people in their town, one would stop short to have found out that their minds are a clear mirror of one’s own. Clearly, the story is but a simple twist in the nature of man that man himself has tried to magnify.
In the beginning, the characters in the story are we, the bored, uninteresting …show more content…
It is a routine that we go through that who could have thought would come out the way it always does, a routine with an end of which we have often seen with our own eyes, but would also shock the undiscerning. And then the end nears…and we still don’t care. We draw our lot, and it is clean—as if our own souls are, that is—big deal, we put the piece of paper in our pocket and it is immediately forgotten. And then the end springs at us…we look the person who’s drawn the dotted lot—look him as if our own souls are anything but the piece of paper he has picked—with stranger’s eyes. We stone him to death, we forget who he is—friend, family member, father, son, husband…and he dies. We go about our chores again and walk and talk as if our civil hands were clean and leave the slaughtered lamb with a triumphant smile because we have won again, we did not draw the cursed lot, he did. It doesn’t matter who ‘he’ is—as long as it’s not we. Our own eyes have beheld the same old scene, but the heart only remembers—and doesn’t feel. We do not care if it would be we who would die next year, as long as we are left living today. We see not nor expect the time of our own downfall—we caused the downfall of another one today and it’s what matters at the