Ah I see, you did explain. Good! Then, Jackson directly introduces the duration of the lottery. "there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery [takes] less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner"(137). Obviously, the whole process of the lottery will end in two hours so that it even will not delay the villagers to go home for lunch. The description of such two numbers implies that the villagers do not care about the lottery and they do not think it is a big deal. It shows the people treat the cruel draw ceremony for deciding to kill someone randomly as an ordinary errand and embodies the people are so cold-blooded and insensitive. In addition, the number seventy-seventh appears two times in the story, and it is spoke out from the same person: Old Man Warner, "the oldest man in town" (137). When Warner is called to select "a slip from the box" (139), he said "'Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery,' as he went through the crowd. 'Seventy-seventy time'" (140). Jackson intentionally stresses the number two times here to cause the readers to raise notice. The number, seventy-seventeenth, represents the old and decayed tradition of the lottery ritual has continued over for seventy-seventeenth years; it represents the lottery has slain seventy-seventeenth villagers at least; it represents Old Man Warner is unaware to take part in the killing activity for all his life. The three special meaningful numbers guide the readers to understand the lottery --- a bloody murder ceremony much easier.
Except the meaningful numbers, another two very important and essential stuffs of being used during the lottery are the stones and the black box. Stones usually are associated with some stubborn, bad and negative meaning things. Indeed, it is a symbol of human punishment and torture in the primitive times.
