The sheer amount of shock from receiving the sudden twist. A blood-curling realization on what’s about to happen. But no words follow, and the reader is left, in a chilling revelation, to slowly digest the ending of Shirley Jackson’s short fiction, “The Lottery”. At least, that was how my first encounter with the story went. Yet what makes it powerful after 75 years of publication exceeds the subliminal feeling of scare, and like all great horror do, extends to the realm of reality.
 
“The Lottery” was a piece that some readers found utterly pointless, referring to Jackson’s deliberately ambiguous way to finish the story. But in this lack of explanation lies the room for free interpretation. Many, pointing to the context “The Lottery” is written in, have taken the story as an allegory of the Holocaust. Recent readers may even see it as a metaphor for cultural anxieties and movements in the modern age. These vastly different translations of the same work precisely demonstrate how the open-ended authorial choice have made “The Lottery” flexible, and therefore, relatable to audiences regardless of time.
 
In these discussions, I am reminded of my own question raised in English class, towards the countless stories we’ve been assigned to: So, what does it really mean? And that’s the greatness of stories that leave a question mark behind for readers to deduct the why? – the message, the thesis, the ultimate answer is entirely entrusted to you. “The Lottery” finds its true power by constantly shifting and adopting to the real world, dutifully reflecting our zeitgeist. It withstands history, because it calls upon the one source of human mind that never ceases to fade: imagination.