The central symbol in the novel is Lucky’s winning lottery ticket. It represents luck and hope. At the beginning of the novel, Lucky purchases it in a small Idaho town near the Nevada border and carries it with her while she is on the run from the law. She soon discovers that she picked the winning numbers, and she tries to keep the ticket safe. Lucky can’t claim her winnings while a fugitive, reinforcing that the ticket represents hope rather than concretely providing a new life immediately.

Several other characters desire to have the lottery ticket because it fuels their hopes for a better life. When Lucky fears that Priscilla will steal her ticket, Lucky hides it in the smoke detector of a storage unit. However, she tells Gloria about the ticket while drunk. When she wakes up, “[i]t was gone” (198). After Gloria steals the ticket, Priscilla steals it from her. With the help of her actual mother, Valerie, Lucky is able to recover the ticket from Priscilla (who also can’t cash it due to the FBI case against her). At this point, it is described in detail: “It was hers. She recognized it immediately: the numbers, and every little mark, every little rip, all the evidence of the journey she had taken with it” (230).