a less violent one. Instead they blindly went along with Old Man Warner and accepted the ritual. Again, color is used symbolically in the usage of a blank or black spotted piece of paper. As “Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper and there was a general sigh through the crowd as he held it up and everyone could see that it was blank” (79) the sight of the blank piece of paper not only meant relief but life. The feeling of anxiety swept the crowd as they saw who possessed the piece of paper that marked death. Tessie had drawn the piece of paper with a “black spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil” her husband “forced the slip of paper out of her hand” (79). The mark was felt heavily on her soul for she knew the outcome of having drawn the black spot. The stones in the story were used symbolically to represent a cold, hard heart. Although the “villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (79). This contrasts what we have read in the bible that only he who had no sins should cast the first stone. Tessie was an innocent bystander to a brutal ritual. While some people such as “Mrs. Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands” others selected “a few pebbles”(79). Perhaps with the passing of age, one feels that the larger the stone the greater the benefit. However, innocence is seen when the children "made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square" they selected the "smoothest and roundest stones" (74). The children followed the examples of their parents although they did not understand the meaning of the ritual.Therefore, the symbolic objects that Jackson uses not only reveal the close mindedness of the villagers, but their acceptance to a ritual that has lost its meaning. The black box and the pieces of paper represent the blac...
