Again the writing is there “what a pity they were a lovely couple. Come inside and play Miss Strangeworth or else I will kill the whole town.” Thump Thump Thump the heartbeat of Miss Strangeworth gets louder and…
“The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson is a short story about an old woman that lives in a small town but has a big secret. Miss Strangeworth has stunning roses in her yard that have been passed down to her from generations; everyone in town comes to admire her roses. Even though Miss Strangeworth knows everyone and is nice to everyone, she anonymously sends letters to people. These letters contain things such as cheating, “accidental” deaths, and telling parents they aren’t fit to have children. I believe that Miss Strangeworth deserved what she got.…
Mrs. Hopkins was the wife of the governor of Hardford. She was depicted as a religiously focused young women with some unusual qualities. She had a physical, mental weakness that left her incapable of understanding or reason. However this disease had been growing for several years. To overcome or distract herself she would fully devote her time to reading and writing and even wrote many books. Mr. Hopkins was a loving man and would tend to his wife’s needs; however, he would never make his grief seen, especially in front of his wife. But because she went looking for trouble in men’s business she got hurt and for that he blames…
that she would get caught someday by her secret actions until she receives a threatening…
Trying to get to know people is like reading a book; you have to figure out every detail. Shirley Jackson’s story, “The Possibility of Evil”, is a way for the readers to learn more about Miss Strangeworth. She is a woman who loves her town, but can be a bit discouraging to the people in her town. Miss Strangeworth’s character can be analyzed by considering what she does and says, what the narrator says about her, and how other characters interact with her.…
In the short story “The Possibilities of Evil”, Shirley Jackson uses numerous symbols to explain particular details to describe Ms. Strangeworth. One symbol Jackson uses is actually Ms. Strangeworth, although elegant and well-mannered, her name obviously explicate how unusual her personality is inside despite the gentle character she possess on the surface. Ms. Strangeworth’s name foreshadows the cause of the possible events happening throughout the story thus creating suspense from her name by the reader. The roses belonging to Ms. Strangeworth contain another example of symbolism signifying how their extreme importance to Ms. Strangeworth since she treats them with the utmost care like their her own children. Not only do they signify sentimental…
The first trait of a disturbed personality is present as The Misfit kills the kids right in front of the grandmother with no care and no mercy. This scene also depicts the trait of a macabre situation as The Misfit and his crew gun down the family. Next, Shirley Jackson’s “The Possibility of Evil”, tells the story of an elderly lady that thinks her job is to keep her town away from evil, however, in the end she gets more than what she bargained for. The disturbed personality in this story is the one of Miss Strangeworth as she assumes it is her prime duty to keep evil out the town like she is some sort of angel. In the town that Miss Strangeworth lived in, the residents looked up to her only because she was more affluent than them.…
“The Possibility of Evil” is a story of Miss Strangeworth’s of Pleasant Street daily routine; though, most of her day to day actions are quite simple Miss Strangeworth does take part in an atypical evening task of writing hateful letters that “dealt with the more negotiable stuff of suspicion” (Jackson 194) of her fellow neighbors. It is unveiled ,through the actions of Dave Harris, when the loose letter is delivered to the addressee ,Done Crane, Mrs. Strangeworth becomes no longer anonymous amongst her fellow neighbors. The disenfranchised neighbors of Mrs. Strangeworth exhibit their feelings of her execrable letters by destroying something that she loves the most, her prized roses. By showing their revulsion toward Mrs. Strangeworth in such an extreme shows the severe effect the letters had on the townspeople, the hate they have towards to her ,and demonstrates that the disenfranchised that they will no longer accommodates Mrs. Strangeworth by believing her accusations. Jackson shows the disenfranchised taking it upon themselves to end their disenfranchisement along with the consequences of disenfranchising…
Miss Strangeworth’s character can be analized by considering what she does, what the narrator says about her and how other character’s interact with her. Miss Strangeworth’s character can be analized by considering what she does. For example she is cheerful. This is because she goes around and says hey to everybody and they usually say it back.in addition she is cheerful because she comments on how it’s a nice day and how it’s a fragrant summer day.…
This story introduces Miss Adela Strangeworth, who considers herself the town matriarch (Jackson, p.6). She anonymously sends letters with mean-spirited truths with the aim of discovering the fright of evil in the townsfolk. She (Miss Strangeworth) has lived for over 70 years in this same small town, and as such, considers herself the guardian who is tasked with spotting the potential evil in others. This is depicted when she wrongfully exposes a teenager who, according to her belief, was having sexual relations with his…
The Three Witches or the ‘weird sisters’, skulk like sinister thoughts and unconscious temptations to evil. Their cunning stems from their paranormal powers however, their true ability lies in exploiting the weaknesses of their interlocutors.…
To begin with, the characters of this story emphasizes the theme which is if one trusts strangers easily based on the outer self, they may find themselves in trapped consequences. First of all, Billy Weaver denies of his own suspicions in both disguises of the landlady and the boarding house, that allows ‘them’ to delude him further on. Billy Weaver insists that the old landlady has been just an overly sincere person because of the way she welcomes him into the boarding house, how she prepares the bed ready…
The concept of Simone de Beauvoir’s myth of women discussed in ‘The Second Sex’ was still very much prevalent in the 1960s when ‘To Room nineteen’ was set and certainly at the time of ‘Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’. In the 1960s, in accordance with the second wave of feminism, women were thought to be more conscious and aware of their rights as a woman because of the media (Hanisch)1 and this is what we, as a reader could easily deduce from the beginning of Doris Lessing’s ‘To room nineteen’. This new- found consciousness however some would argue was not the case during the 1960s and is certainly not the case in the text. ‘The Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ is a male dominated thriller where female instabilities are never exposed as females are hardly ever mentioned (Shuo and Dan, 2012)2. This Victorian marginalization of women was very common at the time and also links to woman being classified, according to Simone de Beauvoir in ‘The Second Sex’ as the ‘Other’ (de Beauvoir, 1949 p. 16)3 and not worthy of being the subject of the novella. Both texts involve the notion of a demon taking over the main character, whether this demon is a result of their own creation or a result of society. The following essay will attempt to draw similarities and differences between the two texts in relation to Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex’.…
I’m Bertha, the woman whose proud of her own beauty and high social class, once being desired and fancied by many rich British businessmen, but those were all before I was being caged and being treats like a lunatic and a wild animal. Such ridiculous and tragic destiny, but no one would sympathize my encounter, in opposite I'm the one that is framed as insane. I walk soullessly, wandering around the hallway like a ghost, and finally, I stopped in front of a room that is filled with the odor of that hypocrite Mr. Rochester, the master of Thornfield. I slowly walk inside the room, stare at that hypocrite’s face blanketly, without any hesitation, I dropped my candle on the floor, when the fire touches the carpet, it gets aggressive and…
Many times in life acting upon jealousy usually backfires. So when a jealous witch in a seventeenth-century town in New England started “making a scarecrow,” you start to piece things together and things don’t seem like they will turn out right (Hawthorne 1). And thus begins the short story, “Feathertop”, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Using archaic word choice, wicked words, and talking about things that were popular in the seventeenth-century, Nathaniel Hawthorne used setting to convey the idea that wickedness was a common thing in those times and most often provoked jealousy.…