Fairness as a lottery is depicted to be a subjective and manipulated matter.Īnother 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. Hutchinson that this is not right and not fair might be interpreted as the representation of racism and discrimination of women (Landau 19). Indeed, the lottery and the repetitive comments of Mrs. However, it is only one representative who is exposed to being beaten to death with rocks (Jackson). Indeed, given that the lottery represents injustice in society, the chances of being so-called lucky are distributed across the members of the community. The concept of the lottery has a deeper symbolic meaning due to the application of the phenomenon of lottery to the killing of Mrs. People act collectively, abiding by the cruel rules of the lottery, invented long ago, and no one remembers when and why.

Another interpretation of its symbolism is the injustice as tradition and long-established social order, which nobody wants to break (Turkie 15). 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). On the one hand, the lottery represents war and death. On the background of multiple descriptive details opening the narration, the violence of the lottery has an increased emotional impact on readers. As the title implies, the lottery is an important symbol in the story.

Story the lottery