Point of View in The Lottery by Shirley Jackson Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" uses third-person dramatic point of view to tell the story of an unnamed village celebrating a wicked, annual event. The narrator of the story provides many small details about the unfolding of the lottery, but leaves the most crucial and chilling detail until the end: the winner of the lottery is stoned to death by the other villagers. The use of third-person point of view, with only a few instances of third-person omniscient thrown in, is an effective way to tell this ironic story, both because the reporter's blandness of the narrator parallels the apparent apathy of the villagers in the lottery comparisons, and because it helps build a surprise ending by providing information to the reader through the actions and discussions of the villagers without revealing the final twist. "The Lottery" is told primarily in the dramatic third-person point of view, but at times the narrator becomes omniscient to divulge information to the reader that is commonly known to the villagers. In paragraph 7, for example, art ...