Alyssa’s AP Blog

The story “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, had a few literary archetypes in it. One of them was the color black which almost always represents death, and in this case it was shown by the black box and the dot on the paper of the person stoned to death. Old Man Warner and his old traditional way of thinking was an example of the elders in the community that know the only correct way is the way of the past. The women in the town were stereotypicalin the way that they all came together in the beginning to “exchange bits of gossip” (252). The most important archetype was that of the “scapegoat”, where everyone thinks that by having the “lottery in June, corn be heavy soon” (256). It is a scapegoatbecause the entire town will let someone die so the rest of them can have a nice crop and not having control of their own futures. All of these archetypes are prevalent in many other stories and follow the same stereotypes, but “The Lottery” has a unique spin that changes these archetypes participation in the story.