Persecution is the hostility and ill treatment, especially because of race, political, or religious beliefs. In the story "The Lottery" the author Shirley Jackson created a Gothic Ficttion story to represent randomness of persecution. In "The Lottery" every townsmen in the village gathered together to pull random names out of an old black box. The random names were the names of people who lived in the small town. If their names happened to be drawed, it was mandatory that they were killed by whoever pulled their name. This story shows the randomness of persecution through the literary devices of characterization, symbolism, irony, and startle factor. In the small village of townsmen, including children, their names went inside the chipped