But reading “The Lottery” as a connect-the-dots political commentary misses the primary source of the story’s power: its ambiguity. Today, readers across the political spectrum seem to be losing their appetite for literary discomfort. I was reminded again of that quality in 2017 by a different story in The New Yorker. Just as the #MeToo movement was getting underway, “Cat Person,” a short story by Kristen Roupenian, went viral for very similar reasons. The reaction was not unlike the reaction to “The Lottery.” “People get angry when they can’t figure out what something means,” Ms. Roupenian told me.

---

Persons: Jackson, McCarthy, Elizabeth Gilbert, Wesley Morris, we’re, it’s, Kristen Roupenian, Ms, Roupenian Organizations: Yorker, Trump, The Locations: Soviet, Ukraine, Russia, New