grass was richly green." (222) The village sounds like somewhere you might want to live. It has a grocery store, post office, bank, school, a coal business and a village square. The village holds square dances, a teen club, a Halloween program as well as other civic activities. (222) There are children playing and people gathering in the village. We know it is a farming community as the men talked of tractors and planting. "Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes." (222) The setting in the beginning of the story is a great contrast to the setting at the end of the story. In the end, we are left with a dark uneasy feeling. The innocent village square is now the site of a homicide. The "normal" happy people are violent and evil and bare no resemblances of innocence. The barbaric nature of the lottery makes the reader want to think this must have happened in ancient times. Times when sacrificial rituals were of the norm; virgins jumping into volcanoes and such, however, from the mention of tractors in the story we know this is in the twentieth century. Jackson uses this contrast of setting to show her point of how society will hide behind traditions and rituals.
             Symbols are key in foreshadowing the true meaning of "The Lottery". From the beginning of the story, Jackson throws hint after hint to her reader regarding what is about to take place. "Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys so
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