Winning at a Cost “Although ominous symbolic details prepare the tragic outcome, the reader's attention is cleverly distracted” (Schaub). The word Lottery makes you think of winning and luck. In this ironic tale, an unexpected change of events occurs. Shirley Jackson was born on December 14, 1916 and died on August 8, 1965. Growing up she wrote poems and short stories, bounced around colleges but ended up earning her bachelor's degree and meeting her future husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, at Syracuse University. She suffered from weight gain throughout her life and was also a heavy smoker, causing her premature death at age 48. In the short story The Lottery, there is a small town on a beautiful spring day that gathers in the center of town to conduct the annual Lottery. The family that pulls the unfortunate black dot onto a piece of paper wins. At the end of the story you find out that the lottery winner is not so lucky and is even stoned. Shirley Jackson develops her theme of whether traditions are always good in her short story "The Lottery" through the use of symbolism, characterization, and irony. The story contains many symbols, some of these are the Box and the Stones. A symbol is the stones collected by the children at the beginning of the story. “The children arrive first and some boys begin to pile rocks and stones” (Du Bose). At the beginning of the story the atmosphere is festive and cheerful rather than morbid. While it is unusual for children to collect stones, the detail is overlooked due to the rest of the descriptions of the city. It's simply tradition for children and even their parents see nothing wrong with it, which confirms my theme. “Bob… in the center of the paper… write down this idea of ​​an imperfect tradition. When people lose sight of why they are doing something, then it's time to change it. Works Cited Du Bose, Thomas. “The Lottery”. Masterplots, fourth edition (2010): 1-3. Literary reference center. Network. January 29, 2014.Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery”. 1950. Modern Short Stories: A Critical Anthology. Np: Harcourt, Brace ed., 1986. 394-90. Print.Schaub, Danielle. “Shirley Jackson's Use of Symbols in 'The Lottery...'” English Short Story Journal 14 (Spring 1990): 79-86. Rpt. in twentieth-century literary criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. vol. 187. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Network. January 29, 2014.Wagner-Martin, Linda. "The Lottery: Overview." Reference Guide to Short Fiction. Ed. Noelle Watson. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. Literature Resource Center. Network. January 29. 2014.