Tone, Style, and Symbols in “the Lottery” and “the Rocking Horse Winner

Tone, Style, and Symbols in “The Lottery” and “The Rocking Horse Winner

Diana Greene

Liberty University

Thesis Statement and Outline

      Thesis Statement:  “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson and “The Rocking-Horse Winner” by D. H. Lawrence are both short stories in which the authors use symbolism to convey the theme of each story. However, these short story’s themes are contrasting, with one of the story’s theme being a quest for love and the other theme is the lack of love.

1. To convey the themes of “The Lottery” and “The Rocking-Horse Winner” the authors use symbolism.  

A.  In “The Lottery” there is the black box which a symbol of the villager’s tradition.

       1.  The “black box” was the specific equipment used for the lottery that had lost        

            some of it original purpose.  The villagers were will to let go of some of the                          

            original rule for the lottery, but never decide to get rid of it all together, even

            though other villages had rid themselves of the lottery.

       2.  Though the “black box” had gotten ragged and shabby, there was never an    

             interest for it to be replace.  The original intent of the “black box” had lost its

             meaning over the years because not only was it shabby but the wooden chip

             were replaced with pieces of paper.  

      3.    The “black box” was only significant one time a year, then it was place in

             various, unimportant places for storage throughout the village for the rest of

             the year.  

B.  The use of symbolism in “The Rocking-Horse Winner” is the rocking horse and

      the whispering house.

1.  The whispering house’s statement to the family would be, “there must

  be more money when the family would spend money on thing that were

   costly and they could not afford them.  

1.  Paul though if his luck improve that he would stop the house from

  whispering.

1.  Paul needed money and he no longer knew from his rocking horse how to

       get it.  

1. Despite each author’s use of symbolism for their theme, there are contrasting themes in each story.

1. “The Lottery”, shows a lack of love and a presence of persecution in the village

 people.

1.  Because of the expectation of the lottery each year, there were no questions

 asked from the villagers, the just expected the tradition.  

1.  Despise the lack of meaning for the lottery the village refuse to relinquish their custom.  
2. Because of the acceptance of the lottery, the adults were teaching the children

a lack of love and compassion and how to persecute others.

1.  In “The Rocking-Horse Winner, the theme was a quest for love.  

1.  In order for Paul to receive love from his mother, he felt the need to be

  lucking and this was the only way for her to except him.

1.  Paul sacrificed everything to be lucky and for his mother’s love.  In Paul proof of his becoming lucky he gave his mother wealth, risking everything which inevitably cost Paul his life.  

Tone, Style, and Symbols in “The Lottery” and “The Rocking-Horse Winner”

      In each of the titles of these stories, “The Lottery” and “The Rocking-Horse Winner”, the authors have captured the audience by using words that would bring to the mind of the reader something that is pleasurable and enjoyable. The word lottery and winner usually are associated with gain and fun, leading to a positive outcome and a happy ending.  However, the authors of these two stories have given us quite the opposite of the ending of these stories, their themes are contrasting, with one of the story’s theme being a quest for love and the other theme is the lack of love.

     In these stories, “The Lottery” and “The Rocking Horse Winner”, the authors have made use of symbolism that indirectly conveys the center of the message and the theme for each of the story.  With love, even though there is a lack of it in one story, and the use of symbols, being the things that both of these stories share as a theme. Shirley Jackson’s, “The Lottery”, tells about the lack of love and the evil of blindly following the traditions of a village.  Jackson is attempting to show that people should what is important and what is not important in a tradition before acting upon it.  In “The Lottery”, she uses the black box to symbolize the lost meaning to an old tradition for the people in the village.  As a matter of fact, the author states in the story, “the original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago”, (Jackson, 2013, p. 71) just as the original tradition and its meaning had also been lost.  This symbolic item brought about some excitement, anxiety, and fear because someone was going to be the one picked in their annual traditional event that had dismissed some of the traditional rules, instruction, and items used for the lottery.  Through the many years of the lottery this black box had become, as the author calls it, “shabby”, beaten up, and the original wooden chips that belonged inside the box were replaced with pieces of paper, and each year the box was stored in a variety of places, out of sight and out of the minds of the people until the next year’s lottery.  There was no interest shown by the people of the village to replace it the box nor the wooden chips, but they were also not willing to let this tradition go.  Although the meaning of the lottery’s essential meaning had been lost long ago, the villagers were willing to change and to forget a few of the things about the lottery for it to suit the town as it changed over the years.