Skip to main content

What is the point of view of the story of "The Lottery"?

The point of view of "The Lottery" is the third person point of view.  


A third person point of view places the narrator outside of the events happening in the story.  The narrator obviously knows characters and things that are happening, but a third person narrator means that the story's narrator is not a character within the story.  More specifically, the narrator of "The Lottery" is narrating from the third person objective point of view.  This allows the narrator to jump from person to person and group to group.  Readers are allowed to listen in on various conversations as if we are eavesdropping on everybody.  


The fact that the narrator is only capable of eavesdropping on people is why this story's point of view is third person objective and not third person omniscient.  An omniscient narrator is privy to the internal thoughts of characters, and the narrator of "The Lottery" never indicates that knowledge. That's a good thing for this story too.  If readers knew the thoughts of the characters, the final shocking moments of the story wouldn't be as shocking.  


One natural effect of the third person narration is that readers feel a bit of distance from the events happening in the story.  We feel invested to a certain extent, but we also know that the events (good or bad) are always happening to somebody else.  That distance is important for this story.  While readers are appalled at the realistic feel of the lottery, we can at least take comfort that the people are not our personal friends.  It's not my town's tradition.  It's their town's tradition.  I've often wondered what this story might be like from the first person perspective.  I don't think the ending would be as shocking, because a character narrator would likely give away his/her apprehension about the lottery system.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more