In every situation the eyes through which you view what is occurring are important. Everyone’s perception of events varies as does their opinion and values. Hearing what happened from a participant will differ wildly from that of a witness, what one believes to be important details may be minor to someone else. The point of view from which an author tells a story has a dramatic effect on the reader’s interpretation of the text. According to Perrine, the four main points of view are omniscient, third-person, first-person, and objective (Arp 253). Third-person omniscient narrators are free to tell the reader any information about the characters- opinions, feelings, thoughts, anything whereas third-person limited narrators are restricted to one of the characters. When the story is told from
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By omitting the availability of each character's private thoughts, the reader is introduced to the lottery as it happens. Given that none of the character's dialogue directly points to what the lottery actually is, suspense builds for the reader. From the first sentence, “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day” (Jackson 278), and from the title of the story, “The Lottery”, the reader immediately infers that the lottery is a good thing that causes the town to be happy. Although the true meaning of the lottery is not presented directly, Shirley Jackson uses the objective point of view to introduce the reader to important hints to the ending without telegraphing it. For example, in only the second paragraph, the narrator observes, "Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones..." (Jackson 278). These stones are used to kill a person by story's end, but the information is delivered so plainly and amidst other less meaningful details that it slips under the reader's
By omitting the availability of each character's private thoughts, the reader is introduced to the lottery as it happens. Given that none of the character's dialogue directly points to what the lottery actually is, suspense builds for the reader. From the first sentence, “The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day” (Jackson 278), and from the title of the story, “The Lottery”, the reader immediately infers that the lottery is a good thing that causes the town to be happy. Although the true meaning of the lottery is not presented directly, Shirley Jackson uses the objective point of view to introduce the reader to important hints to the ending without telegraphing it. For example, in only the second paragraph, the narrator observes, "Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones..." (Jackson 278). These stones are used to kill a person by story's end, but the information is delivered so plainly and amidst other less meaningful details that it slips under the reader's