Previous
Literary Devices
Definition of Allegory
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events. The story of "The Tortoise and The Hare" is... read full definition
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events. The story of "The... read full definition
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and... read full definition
Allegory
Explanation and Analysis—Human Cruelty:
While some scholars read “The Lottery” as an allegory for the Holocaust (given that Jackson wrote it in 1948 and it is about whole communities unquestioningly killing innocent people), others believe that it is an allegory for human cruelty as a whole. The following passage—which comes near the end of the story, after Tessie Hutchinson has pulled the paper marking her to be stoned to death—captures the story’s allegorical nature:
Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; there were stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box. Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands.
This passage captures the way that the villagers participate in this “ritual” not because they understand the original impetus for it, but because it’s just become normalized and routinized (which is true for many traditional practices in human societies throughout history). The fact that the villagers are using stones hints also at Jackson's allegorical intentions, as stones are a primitive weapon used across cultures.
It is worth noting that Jackson wrote this allegorical story not to support or glorify this type of behavior (as many furious New Yorker readers believed upon its initial publication), but because she wanted to warn against the ways that human cruelty can become embedded into cultures and therefore normalized.
Related Themes:
