Jackson's The Lottery has always been considered as one of the finest examples of using irony in the most effective way which thoroughly violates reader's expectation and leaves him with the most horrifying feeling he can get from a story, and at the next step makes him contemplate how much a human being stuck to his tradition can become cruel and savage. This vast range of impression is the product of ironical ending of the story and it would not have happened if the writer had chosen another point of view but objective (dramatic) one.
Writer artistically has used objective point of view to tell the ironic tale of the people of an anonymous village in which each year a lottery would take place. This year the reader is invited to see the story of the lottery through a camera-like narrator by which he can see every trivial detail of the events and characters' attitude without any partiality in narration. The objective narrator keeps the reader's attention till the end of the story and suddenly the beautiful ironical ending inverts his expectations, leaves him in shock, horror and despair.
If under any circumstances another point of views had been used, the result would have been nothing like what mentioned above. The first person point of view would spoil the whole story since the narrator reveals his feelings and thoughts and there would be no violation of experience at the end. The 3rd person omniscient point of view is also not proper as it is an all-knowing narrator and can come to characters' minds and would reveal their thought so that from the very beginning the truth of lottery would be uncovered since the characters mainly think about this event. Besides, he could leave comments or interpretation which seems useless in this story because the reader himself should get the point that the writer wants to imply. The limited-omniscient point of view as well, narrates the story from one of the character's eyes who seems unable to be impartial since he is a part of this horrifying lottery and also through his feelings and opinions all or maybe part of the information would be unveiled and the horror and irony of the ending diminishes.
In conclusion, writer's use of objective point of view has enabled her to keep the outcome of the story a surprise. It has been the most effective way of telling her ironic and horrifying tale by revealing trivial details to distract reader's attention from the main terrifying event and let him believe that he is going to witness an ordinary and even amusing game so that the ending would be more shocking to him.
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