The Possibility of Evil

Conflict is a big issue in the story The Possibility of Evil. The main conflict is person versus society and is between Miss Strangeworth and the whole town. Miss Strangeworth is a two faced character. Miss Strangeworth pretends to be a friend to all her so called friends and fellow town’s people, but secretly sends them disgusting and hurting messages in the mail unsigned. The author of the story really makes the reader want to figure out why a person that has lived in the town her whole life and knew everybody, [“She knew everyone in town, of course; [...] she had not spent more than a day outside this town in her long life [...] She was seventy-one” (249)] would do something terrible to that level to the only people she knows. At first when Miss Strangeworth’s actions are revealed to the reader, one may think that she is crazy, but as one reads on one starts to notice some other reasons. The

Indeed, Miss Strangeworth may be kind when out and about but as soon as she sits down to write, a whole new side of her comes out. She is incredibly deceptive. She writes letters with

Strangeworth is just like Vera, in that, they both lie and find it entertaining. In the story Mrs. Strangeworth is in, she writes these letters about possible evil things that others may or may not be doing. She is , in my opinion, a very old lady. She is not married and there is no indication of children. This leads me to believe that she is also very lonely. The story mentions a bridge club, but it does not say she attended, nor does it say she ever had company over. So, I believe she writes these letters for means of entertainment. Since she is not in on the fun, she writes about it and tells others what they may or may not have done wrong. In my opinion, she only wants to entertain

Miss Strangeworth also spills out whatever is on her mind. She does not consider other people’s emotions once they read the letter and she brushes it off like an everyday task. While doing so she believe she is doing the people good. She is a hypocrite because she says that there is a lot of evil in the world

To begin with, Miss Strangeworth expresses her evil when disclosing written letters to various people anonymously. Miss Strangeworth comes upon a woman named Helen Crane who is upset about her baby being slow in the stages of development. In response to the lady being upset, Miss Strangeworth claims, “Nonsense. All babies are different. Some of them develop much more quickly than others” (Jackson 3). Meanwhile, Miss Strangeworth composes a letter addressed to Helen Crane stating, “Didn’t you ever see an idiot child before? Some people just shouldn’t have children, should they?” (Jackson 4). This is significant as it reveals her harshness in the letter. She is being hypocritical and discourteous leading to an act of cruelty by being offensive to Helen speaking

Miss Adela Strangeworth talks to everyone in her town as she passes them . (citation ) The reasons that she talks to everyone is so that she can get information about . Miss Adela wants to know about want everyone in her town is up to because she wants to keep her town pure .When she would talk to the people in her town

In addition to her schemes, “She addressed an envelope to Don Crane after a moment’s thought, wondering curiously if he would show the letter to his wife, and using a pink envelope to match the pink paper.” WIthout a doubt, Miss Strangeworth didn't mind causing problems for the families in her town, as long as it didn't affects her and her roses, she was fine with

The beginning of the story portrays Miss Strangeworth as a sweet old lady who cares about her town and everyone in it. As the story progresses, MissStrangeworth begins to demonstrate different characteristics that pull her farther and farther away from the image that she portrays at the start of the story. Miss Strangeworth from “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson is a 71 year old woman who believes that she holds responsibly to rid her town of evil. Miss Strangeworth will do anything to ensure the people in her town and the town itself, are safe. Within the short story, “The Possibility of Evil” Miss Strangeworth demonstrates that she is a proud, cautious and sarcastic individual.

The narrator seems to mostly describe her, (although I would like to point out that the narrator seems to be speaking about her from her own thoughts) as both innocent and possessive. Aside from believing that the entire town belongs to her, she refuses to let anything go, even something as small as a rose: “Miss Strangeworth never gave away any of her roses, although the tourists often asked her.” She simply couldn’t stand the idea of anything from her town being brought the outside world. The thought of her roses being brought out of her town to far away places disturbed her, and she refused to allow it. Considering the above, she can be described as both innocent and

If people in “her” town do not want her to be involved in their private business, then she needs to stay out of it. Therefore Miss Strangeworth’s ability to be inconsiderate hurts her character because it causes people to not appreciate

To begin with, Miss Strangeworth is an old lady that wants to control the town. She believes that since her grandfather built the first house on Pleasant Street, she is the matriarch of the town. From her thinking, the town belongs to her

Ten children are killed every day in the United States by guns; people are murdered senselessly; Columbine High School; Over one-third of middle school children in Cascade County have used illegal drugs and over one-half have tried alcohol; innocent people in foreign countries are being wiped out (Kosovo); The Holocaust; Hiroshima; Vietnam; poverty, starvation and oppression in third world countries; Capitalism; environmental decay and neglect; the media; Oklahoma City; the uni-bomber; earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, airplane crashes; domestic/child abuse; disease, birth defects and mental disorders. Why?Why?Why?… The question never changes and is asked over and over and over and

Miss Adela Strangeworth, the protagonist of “The Possibility of Evil”, lives in a house that her family built two generations ago. She loves her house- “with its slimness and its washed white looks” (Jackson 3) and she especially loving and protective of her beautiful red and pink roses aligned in the front of her house. “Miss Strangeworth never gave away any of her roses, although the tourists often asked her. The roses belonged on Pleasant Street, and it bothered Miss Strangeworth to think of people wanting to carry them away, to take them into strange towns and down

First of all I think that Miss Strangeworth is the worst character of all the characters Adela, an old lady, finds pleasure in writing letters to remind people evil is everywhere (Appositive phrase). She is the reason for the whole town having problems with each other. This is because she writes letters to the town in private, discussing problems with people and what is wrong with them. This causes a lot of problems within the community and distrust, ”She had been writing her letters sometimes two or three every day for a week, sometimes no more than once a month, for the past year. She never had gotten any answers, of course, because she had never signed her name” (Jackson 194). She interferes with the community by judging people with her letters, and she even knows that this is wrong because the fact that she writes her letters in private and only sends them when it is late at night so no one can see her. That just shows that she may pretend like she does not know what she is doing, but really she does know that sending those letters is hurting the people around her, because she writes them in private, and sends them anonymously. (Jackson 186-198)

Describing Miss Strangeworth is pretty easy. She is very two faced, as the kids these days say. In person she is a very nice old lady but behind closed doors she is a rather mean lady who writes hate mail. She is basically like an Internet troll, but without the Internet. She doesn’t