In Understanding Fiction, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren suggest unease with the story's structure, contending that Shirley Jackson has
preferred to give no key to her parable, but to leave its meaning to our inference.
Working with "The Lottery" as a parable, why not focus on the symbols as keys to this parable? One approach sees certain characters as representative of social classes: Mr. Graves and Mr. Summer represent the upper class because of their power and money, while Bill Hutchinson and Mr. Adams represent the working class. The lottery represents fate that determines people's social class.
Another approach has the names suggestive of other things. Mr. Graves represents the imminent death that waits for the person with the black mark. Even Mrs. Delacroix--the French word choix means cross--has symbolic meaning, as does Mr. Summers, whose name represents the time of year of the lottery. The black box is the coffin/doom and forthcoming death; the lottery represents the random and senseless acts of violence in human beings.
So, a thesis about symbols could be about how they give meaning to Jackson's parable about man in her short story, "The Lottery."
See the site below for additional criticisms:
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