The Lottery: Revealing The Theme Through The Tone And Symbols

As one knows, whether the story is fiction, or nonfiction every story develops a real life message known as theme. All authors are great at developing a theme. For example, “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. The story “The Lottery” catches a reader’s attention even when there is no interest. In the story “The Lottery” the author develops the theme by using, tone and symbols.

The author in the story uses tone. Both are important because it gives the reader gets sense of what is going on by the tone changing it gives the reader a different feeling on what is happening. The author in the story “The Lottery” the author starts the story by saying “In the morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blooming profusely and the grass was richly green” (Jackson 1). The author is giving the readers a nice welcoming, and giving the reader a mind set that the story will be good. This quote also gives the reader a sense of a new beginning of a normal life, but in this situation it is not a fresh start of a new life because later on in the story it is revealed that the winner of the lottery is going to get killed. The setting of this story is a village of where the characters were from. Jackson also uses tone to reveal her theme because as the story goes deeper stuff get more intense, so by the tone changing it tells the reader that something is going to happen or happened.

Next, Jackson in “The Lottery” also uses symbols to unreveal her message. She uses Warner, the oldest in town as a symbol. He is a symbol because Mr. Warner represents the famous tradition of the Lottery in his town. Not a lot of people agree with having the lottery. There has even been generations that tell Mr. warner that they should stop doing it, but Mr. Warner thinks they’re crazy and calls them “pack of crazy fools” (Jackson 4). This quote is showing that young kids have told Mr. Warner they should stop the lottery just like other towns have. Mr. Warner also believes that if the lottery changes later on it would be devastating in his eyes. Another symbol used in the lottery is the dark dot on the piece of paper. The dot on the paper mean death, so meaning if one gets the dot they will be stoned to death.

To end, the theme Jackson was revealing in the story “The Lottery” is that following a tradition and no realizing what the tradition actually does can be dangerous. As the reader finishes the story, the reader will notice that they stone innocent people to death just because the tradition says so. The Lottery is so big and meaningful to them that they don’t see the damage it has created. Just like Mr. Warner he sees nothing wrong with doing The Lottery and does not see the damage it does. To end as the story is going the reader is able to notice that Jackson used mostly tone, and symbols to share the theme she is giving out. Just like in the beginning Jackson caught the reader’s attention by giving it a nice welcoming, but then as the reader went more in the story they noticed it was not a happy story.