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Summary. Analysis. Miss Adela Strangeworth takes a trip into town to run some errands. She is in good spirits as she breathes in the fresh summer air and reflects on the beauty of the town that she has lived in her entire life. At age 71, she feels a sense of pride and ownership over the town.
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Shirley Jackson's short story \"The Possibility of Evil\" was published in the Saturday Evening Post on December 18, 1965. Although it did not gain the popularity or provoke the outrage that \"The Lottery\" did in 1948, \"The Possibility of Evil\" contains many of the elements seen throughout Jackson's writing: a Gothic house, intimations of deprav...
On the surface, \"The Possibility of Evil\" is a simple story. Readers follow Miss Stangeworth, the story's main character, around town as she completes her daily routine. She is the matriarch of the town, and she acts the part. She knows everything about her town, and she proudly admits that she has never lived anywhere else during her seventy-odd...
Miss Stangeworth, however, is concerned about everyone she meets because something seems \"wrong\" with them. She feels it is her civic duty to stop evil from spreading in her town, so every day she mails anonymous letters to her neighbors to keep them on the alert. Unfortunately, the letters she sends are the very cause of the evil that she has be...
Miss Strangeworth lives up indeed to her unusual name as the narrative unfolds, but the town itself remains unnamed. Because she wants to lend her stories a universal quality, Jackson rarely mentions where the action takes place in her work. The possibility of evil, Jackson implies, could happen anywhere.
The Possibility of Evil. " The Possibility of Evil " is a 1965 short story by Shirley Jackson. Published on December 18, 1965, in the Saturday Evening Post, [1] a few months after her death, it won the 1966 Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery short story. [2] It has since been reprinted in the collections Just an Ordinary Day (1996) and Dark ...
Get unlimited access to SuperSummary. for only $0.70/week. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Don and Helen Crane were really the two most infatuated young parents she had every 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.
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The main themes in “The Possibility of Evil” are appearances versus reality, isolation and privilege, and the ubiquity of evil. Appearances versus reality: The story explores the tensions ...
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The possibility of evil, Jackson implies, could happen anywhere. Cite this page as follows: O'Brien, Jill. "The Possibility of Evil - Introduction." eNotes ...
