I suspect most of us remember our first reading of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” the simple townspeople gathered for the event, an annual tradition, dismayed that the world was changing too fast, that folks the next town over were considering giving it up; others already had. And then that ending. How was it possible?

Shocking, yes. We end the story in a state of bewilderment, horror, frustration, even anger. And for what reason? Well, because we know it’s truth.

Sticks, Sharks, and Quakes

It’s tempting, I think, for shocking stories and poems (and many films) to grab our short attention spans, smack us around a bit, and then let us get back to business. We paid our monies; we got our entertainments. But then, ah, some of them just won’t let go, will they? They stay with us like ugly stowaways in our brains, like repugnant smells or bitter argument.

I can walk away from most TV and movie shockers and twists easily enough. Too many are predictable, the products of teams of writers churning out cliches. “Who will we kill off this week?” or “Let’s have the ‘final girl’ actually be the killer in this movie!” So unexpected. But we need not worry, because the next series I stream will have a mid-season butchery of major characters for fans to rage about online, and the next film will be a remake of one ten years earlier of one five years before that.

But “The Lottery”? Still very present here even 50 years later. Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”? Clarke’s “The Star”? Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”?  These stick around because they quietly whisper something far more sinister into our ears, the looping echo of that original plot-twist slap. 

Even then, I believe too few of us listen to that lingering echo, attend to it closely. Over and over again, I hear these stories offered with exclamations of recognition: “Oh, yeah! I really like that one!” and “That was just crazy at the end!” As if that was all there was to it, no different from the hyper-gory-but-otherwise-boring Red Wedding in Game of Thrones or Fonzie shark-jumping in Happy Days (just as boring but sans gore).

What do these lingering stories have? How do we know? And how do we make sense of what they tell us which is different?  If we take these questions in reverse order, I would say first that these richer tales are worth investigating or getting to know better. If we don’t–if all we do is visit for a quick read (and for students, quicker reading quiz)–we are likely to feel the earthquake but not understand what caused it. We feel the sting of the twist but never know why it was directed at us. And that sting almost felt personal–because it is.

Poke the Mirror

It’s not hard to find a twist or surprise ending in stories and poems; that’s why they are there, to announce themselves, to let us know they mean business. What’s more, good authors know that this structural moment in their tale or verse is exactly where they want our attention, to question, challenge, dig, (self-)examine. And let me go ahead right now and bring that little parentheses to the front of the line: To self-examine. 

Because writers know not only when to bring this surprise forward, but they know it will work on us. After all, the surprise in Jackson’s story is not that the Lottery is held to give away used Pez dispensers (which would also be a surprise but utterly non-sensical); and Chopin’s Louise does not come to the door to meet an insurance pay-out or an adoptable stray kitten. Good writers offer the surprise that finds its way into our own wounds.

“…or maybe it pokes too hard at our anxieties behind our tribalism, patriotism, populism, or screams for freedom.“

Why else would we be so caught up in Louise’s vision of freedom and devastated to lose it? Why else would we (never admittedly) sigh at the first stone directed at Tessie Hutchinson? Why else nod with compassion for O. Henry’s impoverished Della and Jim (“Gift of the Magi“) who sacrifice so uselessly for each other’s gifts? And speaking of heart-warming Christmas stories, I was changed forever by the confession of Clarke’s astronaut Jesuit priest who finds the loving alien civilization destroyed by a supernova. (In a similar space lies Isaac Asimov’s “The Last Question.”)  Each of these stories points itself right to our most sensitive places, the arguments which we dread, the truisms that we don’t often confess aloud, even to ourselves.

It isn’t exactly that the story created the wound; it found the one we neglected for so long we forgot it was there. There’s something elusive about that wound and poking, for sure. The story stays with us for years, and we are still determined not to look too close. We know what happens in the tale, but not often the how or why because that way lies uncomfortable awakenings.

Maybe the shock speaks to our love of nostalgia despite all, or our darker fantasy-fondness for violence on our neighbors; maybe it’s the stupidity of love or the crippling role of poverty; maybe it’s a question of reading Scripture too literally or ignoring counter-narratives in our virtue-signaling; or maybe it pokes too hard at our anxieties behind our tribalism, patriotism, populism, or screams for freedom.

Seen

Poetry, equally, can do this to/for us. I’m thinking of James Wright’s “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota,” where twelve beautiful lines offer us a pastoral bliss of “bronze butterfly” and “cowbells” that “follow one another;” but the thirteenth line is suddenly, “I have wasted my life.” Which type of life has been wasted? What fear does a natural world, unconscious of our observing it, reveal?

Or one much like it, “Archaic Torso of Apollo” by Rilke, that attempts most of its sonnet form struggling to articulate the inherent godlike power still residing in a broken statue, then turns suddenly: “You must change your life.” How does art not compel us to accountabilityAccountability is a claim on our actions, but it is external... More? “For here there is no place that does not see you.”

“Coffee Break” by Kwame Dawes, still another pleasant Christmas scene. But is it Christmas or the creamer choice that quite disturbs us most once we find its end? 

This Was About Irony?

Whether we find that story moment or that filmic turn a real twist or merely unexpected, we should trust that its lasting power is intentionally pointed, a sharpened stick that found its mark in the personal “I” or collective “us.” It’s the kind of technique which turns a situational ironyA "deflection of expectation," where words, situation, or pe... More to a more dramatic one, that the “ironic perceiver,” the we surprised, are only shocked because they found us out. The story may be the earthquake; but the real fault line is within us.