Miss Strangeworth In 'The Possibility Of Evil' By Shirley Jackson

In “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson, Miss Strangeworth us constantly critical of the people around her. One way the author shows this is the moment she judges Linda Stewart’s behavior. “Only yesterday the Stewarts’ fifteen-year-old daughter Linda had run crying down her own front walk on the way to school, not caring who saw her” (176). Miss Strangeworth seemingly disapproves of the way Linda Stewart does not care who sees her as she shows so much grief. The way Miss Strangeworth describes the situation makes it seem that Linda should not be showing herself in that light in public. Similarly, Miss Strangeworth is judgmental of the librarian’s lifestyle. “Miss Strangeworth noticed Miss Chandler had not taken much trouble with her

Everyone tries to avoid bad things in life, but our world is faced with lots of bad or evil activity and Lucille Fletcher´s ¨The Hitchhiker¨ is no different. The character Ronald Adams is faced with an unknown man, Ronald first sees the man on the Brooklyn Bridge and swerves to miss the hitchhiker .As Ronald swerves, he get into a car accident as Ronald sees the man continually the hitchhiker will bring Ronald insanity on the drive to New Mexico, Ronald sees this man many times; he continues to go crazy; he has mood swings and tries to find the man. As Ronald drives, he obsesses over the hitchhiker. In ¨The Hitchhiker¨, Fletcher uses the hiker to represents, evil in order to build suspense in the short story.

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

The things Miss Strangeworth did was weird. To demonstrate “Miss Adela Strangeworth stepped daintily along Main Street on her way to the grocery.” Most seventy-one year olds don’t walk, they usually drive or have someone to take them to the store but Miss Strangeworth walks to the grocery. It was a nice day. Additionally “The sun was shining, and the air was fresh and clear after the night’s heavy rain, and everything in Miss Strangeworth’s little town looked washed and bright.”

Maudie Atkinson is an often overlooked character in the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird. She is often described as open minded, and outspoken. She shaped the Finch children in many ways throughout their childhood. In many ways she was a moral guide to the children. She was open minded, would tell it like it is, and try not to let the world drag her down.

Don’t criticize what you can’t understand. You may miss out on a good story. For example, you may see this really pretty girl, but her attitude can be horrible. It's important to look under the surface before deciding or criticizing something big or small.  The characters in the short stories, “The Possibility of Evil,” by Shirley Jackson, and “Lamb to the Slaughter,”  by Roald Dahl, could have learned from this. In, “The Possibility of Evil,” Miss Strangeworth would judge people and try to fix the situation without knowing the full story. In, “Lamb to the Slaughter,” Mary seems to be a calm, beautiful lady who loves her husband, but is capable of committing a crime many could not fathom to commit. In both stories, the main characters seem to be one thing, but turn out being something completely different .

The popular Disney film, Beauty and the Beast, the beloved character, Beast, seems to have the characteristics of depression, and learned helplessness. Martin Seligman began an experiment of shocking dogs in 1956. His study involved evaluating the reaction to a dog being allowed to escape during being shocked. Some of these animals were classically conditioned to associate the ringing of a bell to a shock given. Within the next few experiments, the dogs would either run away at the sound of a bell or show a fear related behavior. For some of the dogs used in the experiment, although get could escape the enclosure from a shock, they didn't, they just sat there and took the pain; Seligman explained this as being “Learned Helplessness”.

The character of the mother executes the tell-tale signs of counterfeit happiness when she tells the murderous story of the narrator’s father’s brother. “‘Oh honey,’ she said, ‘there’s a lot that you don’t know. But you are going to find out’” (36).

In the fictional novel The Scarlet Letter, the contrast between public and private truth is made quite clear. The three main characters of this book make perfect examples of this overarching theme. The characters in this book are the pastor Mr. Dimmesdale, the doctor Roger Chillingworth, and the adulteress Hester Prynne. First, Mr. Dimmesdale, who seems like devout clergyman to the public, has a big secret that could get him killed if it were made known. Next, Roger Chillingworth, a harmless doctor in the eyes of the public, is actually a man on an evil and vengeful mission. Finally, Hester Prynne’s public truth is that she is unimportant outcast while in private the complete opposite is true. In conclusion, Mr. Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth, and Hester Prynne all are prime examples of the theme, public versus private truth, that Hawthorne tries to convey in The Scarlet Letter.

In Evil Under the Sun, Agatha Christie explores several different facets of good and of evil. Murder is presented as the ultimate evil: taking the life of a human being is an act that cannot be reversed. The act of murder is made especially grim when it is committed in cold blood. However, there are also other layers of what can be called "evil" from an ethical framework. Each of these layers pertain to the machinations of the human mind when it seeks to do something counter to ethics or moral righteousness. For example, the two murderers weave a web of deceit and lies. Each of the lies is designed to steer the detective away from the truth about the murder, therefore revealing the way evil compounds itself.

Now there is the matter of how did the letter get to the house. The story mentions that the door was warped. Mrs. Dover had a hard time getting her key into the lock. Was the door even locked at all? There is

Although seemingly innocent, the small town of Corrigan, where the novel, Jasper Jones, is set, is home to a vast number of lies and secrets, and holds an immense amount of deception and manipulation within its walls. Secrets are a pivotal part of life and the human experience, and Jasper Jones reflects this in a relevant and thought-provoking manner, presenting the ways in which secrets and deceits can alter a person’s life for the worse, and cause emotional damage and trauma to those involved with the dishonesty.

Buddha once stated, “it is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.” In “The Possibility of Evil,” Miss Strangeworth, a seemingly innocent elderly woman, sends cruel letters in order to rid her town of evil. When other townspeople discover her as the author of the letters, they destroy her prized roses. Shirley Jackson’s “The Possibility of Evil” not only reveals the deceitfulness of people, but also emphasizes the underlying evil of all humans and shows that evil remains insurmountable until fully accepted.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how overpopulation causes social problems. To do so you must take many things into consideration, such as different views of racial problems and conflicting definitions of a social problem. Social problems can be defined in many different ways. They effect everyone and some of us encounter problems everyday as a result of our race, religion, gender, or low income. Others experience problems from technological change or declining neighborhoods, others are affected directly by crime and violence in their own neighborhood, and sometimes definitions of social problems are changed by society because of changes around you. Finally in

It was just another ordinary run-of-the-mill Friday in the bustling City of Hutchinson, Minnesota… or at least that's what I thought as I awoke to the sound of my Mom calling for me to wake up from the downstairs kitchen. The birds were chirping, the sounds of traffic on main street were growing increasingly louder, and the sun was starting to slowly creep above the trees and shine into my small upstairs bedroom. Little did I know that this was the day I would get into a sizeable amount of trouble at school for the very first time. This trouble would not only be extremely shameful, but would also teach me a valuable lesson that would stick with me for the rest of my life.