Possibility of Evil Theme Miss. Strangeworth has a strange secret. Living on Pleasant Street by herself gives her a lot of time to do what she chooses, but what if she wasn’t the caring old lady people think she was? The Possibility of Evil by Shirley Jackson teaches us to treat others the way you want to be treated because Miss. Strangeworth wrote threatening letters and as a result received letters from the townspeople who also had vandalized her garden in an act of revenge.Some people might interrupt this story to be a karma based tale when it really is about treating people equally. Treat others the way you want to be treated. On Pleasant Street lives Miss. Strangeworth who hides a secret. Miss. Strangeworth writes ill-mannered letters …show more content…
In the story, The Possibility of Evil, gives us the character Miss. Strangeworth, the eloquent woman as she is not afraid to say what she thinks but often holds back as she knows too much. Her thoughts wrap around to the thought of evil when someone does something she doesn’t approve of. On page 2, “Don and Helen Crane, were really the two most infatuated young parents she had ever known, she thought indulgently, looking at the delicately embroidered baby cap and the lace edged carriage cover. ‘That little girl is going to grow up expecting luxury all her life,’ she said to Helen Crane. Helen laughed. ‘That’s the way we want her to feel,’ she said. ‘Like a princess.’ ‘A princess can see a lot of trouble sometimes,’ Miss. Strangeworth said dryly.” That quote proves my idea that Miss. Strangeworth doesn’t care if what she says results in undermining someone else’s self-esteem or their pride. She has her own opinion and has no intention to change it. On page 6, it reads “‘Not anymore Dave, not anymore. You’re not to come near my house again; my father said so. He said he’d horsewhip you. That’s all I can tell you: You’re not to come near our house anymore.’ ‘But I didn’t do anything.’ ‘Just the same, my father said…’ Miss Strangeworth sighed and turned away. There was so much evil in people. Even in a charming little town like this one, there was still so much evil in people.” Miss. Strangeworth disagreed with the way the Harris boy and Linda Stewart, two kids in the town, and her thoughts ran to claiming evil in the world, and she believes her letters are healing the town and cleansing it of its unrighteousness. Miss. Strangeworth has opinions and a patent point of view and embellished in the fact she is respected by all and believes her work, the letters, are what is right for her
Typically, the "bad guy" is easy to spot. He wears black, sneaks around in the shadows, and intention is to destroy. But maybe evil is hidden where it is least expected. Sometimes the blindfold that people become so accustomed to, must be removed to see the true corruption.
Mary Matsuda Gruenewald tells her tale of what life was like for her family when they were sent to internment camps in her memoir “Looking like the Enemy.” The book starts when Gruenewald is sixteen years old and her family just got news that Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japan. After the bombing Gruenewald and her family life changed, they were forced to leave their home and go to internment camps meant for Japanese Americans. During the time Gruenewald was in imprisonment she dealt with the struggle for survival both physical and mental. This affected Gruenewald great that she would say to herself “Am I Japanese?
“Miss Strangeworth is a familiar fixture in a small town where everyone knows everyone else. Little do the townsfolk suspect, though, that the dignified old woman leads another, secret life…”. A secret life can be evil or good, in Miss Strangeworth’s case it is suitable, but do others appreciate this secret life. In The Possibility of Evil Shirley Jackson illustrates inner thinking, revealing action, and symbolism to show how Miss Strangeworth tends the people like her roses, but truly state's them evil.
Flannery O’Connor uses style, tone, and character to tell the story of a family and a band of misfits as they struggle with good over evil in the Southern Gothic short story ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). The style and tone of the characters are depicted in a way that makes it difficult to feel compassion or sympathy for them. The figurative language and style used by the author depicts characters with casual, informal, and extreme Southern stereotypes, diction and attitudes. The tone of the story is ironic in regard to both the characters and plot. O’Connor uses colorful language to describe the characters of the story in a way that allows the reader to vividly see the characters as cartoon like, grotesque, and exaggerated.
In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” that moment of grace arrives when the prominent criminal points his gun at the grandmother. In spite of the fact that in the story she has spent most of the time picking at people while luxuriating in her own particular goodness, she has an epiphany. She takes a gander at the Misfit and thought of her child, realizing that two of them are not so unalike. She is silent and her hat that she is so fond
This quote also gives you an idea of how Miss Strangeworth enjoyed gossip or talking about someone behind their back. Miss Strangeworth was writing letters to “The town where she lived had to be kept clean and sweet” it's ironic how she could say this when in reality she was doing all the evil of the town. The way Miss
In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor creates a story where the roles of good and evil blend together. In the short story, a family in the rural South gets caught up with a criminal named the Misfit after their wreck and they end up getting murdered. The clash between the grandmother and the Misfit highlights the religious aspects of the story and also O’Connor’s beliefs. Her stylistic traits of violence, distortion, and religion are used to convey a corrupt world that needs salvation. O’Connor’s trait of violence is used throughout to reveal the corrupt and criminal world that emanates the need for salvation.
The notion that she owns the town, trying to perfect it, and being deceptive while doing it are all traits that will get Miss Strangeworth in trouble. These traits are all things that lead to the downfall of Miss Strangeworth's roses. Trying to perfect other people is generally not taken well by others, they feel judged, as they are. This story shows why a book should never be judged by the cover, because there are often secrets hiding in the
In a "Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O 'Connor, the contrast of good and evil is not as evident as it appears on the surface. The road that the family in the story travels symbolizes good up until the point the grandmother all but forces the family to make a detour onto a dirt road that leads to their demise. She is the unlikely antagonist in the story. A serial killer named, The Misfit, is the protagonist despite his homicidal actions. Both characters in the story help to illustrate how a relationship with God is perceived good and sacrilegious behavior is perceived evil.
She acts in a caring manner to everyone’s face, but when she is alone, she becomes a heartless woman, determined to reveal what she knows. Miss Strangeworth is the one causing the distress in her community, yet she acts oblivious as to what is bothering everyone. She shows her extreme deceitfulness by attempting to ease Helen Crane’s concern about her child by saying “Nonsense… some of them develop… more quickly than others” (Jackson, 1941, p. 167). This is deceitful because she is aware that there is something different about the child and instead of voicing that, she consoles the mother, only to subsequently shatter her in an anonymous letter. Additionally, Miss Strangeworth cleverly utilizes the most common paper and envelops all townspeople use for her letters.
In this Quote the author explains how she feels about the story she
Most of the characters have broken personalities which are damaged and delusional. People, places, and events in Southern Gothic literature seem to be ordinary at first, but in the end, they reveal to be odd, disturbing and sometimes very gruesome. "A good man is Hard to Find" is a horrific tale about
Human Nature can be both good and evil, we can love people or pray for their failure. In A Separate Peace by John Knowles there is a lot of examples of that throughout the book. The main character, Gene certainly shows many different sides of the good and evil in humans. Gene repents human nature.
Is Ms. Strangeworth a victim OR villain In the short story “The Possibility of Evil” written by Shirley Jackson, the protagonist Ms. Strangeworth is a villain because she isn’t what everyone’s aspect of her is, she is very deceptive, and the letters she sends are the very cause of the evil she’s trying to stop. Ms. Strangeworth is a seventy-one-year-old lady who lives in a little town, which she thinks is her own. She always feels the need to know everything, about everyone. Even though, no one knows who she really is.
Miss Brill is lonely, has a completely messed up mind, and tries to hide her true self by trying to live other people’s lives. Miss Brill views each person at the garden differently. The people who are mostly like her are the ones she judges the most, “Miss Brill had often noticed-there was something funny about nearly all of them. They were odd, silent, nearly all old, and from the way they stared they looked as though they’d just come from dark little rooms or even-even cupboards!” (Mansfield 185).