The Lottery

             In Shirley Jackson's, The Lottery, the people are preparing themselves for a "lottery." This is not the kind of lottery that one usually thinks of, where there is a great prize to be won, but the lottery of death; one where everyone in the town has an equal opportunity of being sacrificed. It takes place early in the morning, on a beautiful summer's day, and all of the town's people are assembled in the square. The children arrive first, and oddly, they are the ones responsible for gathering the stones, then the men arrive, and last are the women. Once all of the town's people have assembled, Mr. Summer's, the conductor of the lottery, announces that the process will begin. All of the tickets that are drawn for the lottery are held in an old black wooden box. Once the black box is in place, and its contents are shuffled, the head of house hold (the father or oldest son, if neither applicable, the mother) goes and picks a piece of folded paper out of the black box. Once all of the head of households have gone, then the other family members go and test their own fait.
             There are many Freudian theories that can be applied to this tale. One is the notion of love and death. In the text, A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, on page 149, the authors make reference to Blake's "Sick Rose," saying "the rose is a classic symbol of feminine beauty. But this beauty is being despoiled by some agent of masculine sexuality..." This same ideal can be applied to The Lottery. The warm summer day can be considered a symbol of feminine beauty, while the black box is a symbol of masculine sexuality. I say this because the black box is a symbol of death, as is the black dot on the "winners" piece of paper; also, the lottery is conducted by men, and that the men have the first pick and the best chance of not being sacrificed. Expanding on the idea that the lo...

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The Lottery. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 13:03, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/12344.html