The Possibility of Evil

Last updated

"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 Tales (2016).

Contents

While not as well-known or read as her 1948 classic, "The Lottery", it later became a set work in high school English classes and appeared as "Elements of English 10". [3]

Plot

Miss Adela Strangeworth is a 71-year-old spinster living in an unnamed small town. She is described prominently as a harmless old lady at the beginning of the story. Through her conversations with various other townspeople, it is evident that Miss Strangeworth feels a sense of ownership towards the town, never having left it for longer than a day, and has great interest in its residents. She also takes great pride in the orderliness of her house, as well as her family roses, which were planted by her grandmother and tended by her mother before her. However, Miss Strangeworth is not such a quiet figure in her town; she often writes anonymous poison pen letters to her neighbors, which are rarely based on fact and more on what gossip she has heard during her walks down the streets. When she is mailing some of them, one is dropped on the ground and one of her neighbors (whom she had once made a subject of her uncouth letters) notices, and, feeling kind, delivers it to the intended recipient (unaware the letter is meant to be anonymous). The next morning, Miss Strangeworth receives a similarly written letter, informing her that her roses, a source of her familial pride, have been destroyed.

Style

Like "The Lottery," it deals with the "casual cruelty in the everyday"[ citation needed ] that Jackson explores in almost all of her short stories.

Themes

This short story explores themes such as a person's duality (two-facedness) among their peers, the dents that people make upon a community and how they restore them, and the revenge of the wronged.

There is also a frequently commented-upon debate on the symbolism of the roses. The most common metaphor is that the roses represent the impression Strangeworth has made on her community seen throughout the story; they represent her respect among the townspeople. Upon the discovery of her cruel "anonymous" letter, though, as her reputation is tarnished, so are her roses. Others argue that the roses represent Strangeworth's cruelty hidden behind her polished exterior: while sweetly fragrant and beautiful on the outside, a closer look reveals thorns.

Critical reception

Joyce Carol Oates described the story as 'terrifying' and it is generally regarded as one of Jackson's finest works.

It was commented in an unrelated Daily Telegraph article that this was the point in which Shirley Jackson had reached maturity as an author, a process that began and continued long after the early & famous publication of Jackson's controversial short story, The Lottery. This is a common opinion that has also been voiced by many other admirers of Jackson such as Paul Theroux and Neil Gaiman.

It has even been commented by some critics to be Shirley Jackson's masterpiece, and superior to The Lottery, We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shirley Jackson</span> American novelist, short-story writer (1916–1965)

Shirley Hardie Jackson was an American writer known primarily for her works of horror and mystery. Over the duration of her writing career, which spanned over two decades, she composed six novels, two memoirs, and more than 200 short stories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joyce Carol Oates</span> American author (born 1938)

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).

<i>Them</i> (novel) 1969 novel by Joyce Carol Oates

Them is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, the third in the Wonderland Quartet she inaugurated with A Garden of Earthly Delights. It was published by Vanguard in 1969 and it won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1970.

"The Lottery" is a short story by Shirley Jackson that was first published in The New Yorker on June 26, 1948. The story describes a fictional small American community which observes an annual tradition known as "the lottery", which is intended to ensure a good harvest and purge the town of bad omens. The lottery, its preparations, and its execution are all described in detail, though it is not revealed until the end what actually happens to the person selected by the random lottery: the selected member of the community is stoned to death by the other townspeople.

Janet R. Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as a Times film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000, Maslin helped found the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York. She is president of its board of directors.

"The Reach" is a short story by American writer Stephen King. First published in Yankee in 1981 under the title "Do the Dead Sing?", it was later collected in King's 1985 collection Skeleton Crew.

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is a frequently anthologized short story written by Joyce Carol Oates. The story first appeared in the Fall 1966 edition of Epoch magazine. It was inspired by three Tucson, Arizona murders committed by Charles Schmid, which were profiled in Life magazine in an article written by Don Moser on March 4, 1966. Oates said that she dedicated the story to Bob Dylan because she was inspired to write it after listening to his song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". The story was originally named "Death and the Maiden".

<i>Black Water</i> (novella) 1992 novella by Joyce Carol Oates

Black Water is a 1992 novella by the American writer and professor Joyce Carol Oates. It is a roman à clef based on the Chappaquiddick incident, in which U.S. senator Ted Kennedy crashed a car and caused the death by drowning of passenger Mary Jo Kopechne. The novella was a 1993 Pulitzer Prize finalist for fiction.

<i>By the North Gate</i> Collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates

By the North Gate is a collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. It was the author's first book, first published by Vanguard Press in 1963.

<i>The Gravediggers Daughter</i> 2007 novel by Joyce Carol Oates

The Gravedigger's Daughter is a 2007 novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It is her 36th published novel. The novel was based on the life of Oates's grandmother, whose father, a gravedigger settled in rural America, injured his wife, threatened his daughter, and then committed suicide. Oates explained that she decided to write about her family only after her parents died, adding that her "family history was filled with pockets of silence. I had to do a lot of imagining."

"The Lovely House" is a gothic short story and weird tale by American writer Shirley Jackson, first published in 1950. The story features several overtly gothic elements, including a possibly haunted house, doubling, and the blurring of real and imaginary. It appeared under the title "A Visit" in New World Writing, No. 2, 1952.

<i>American Gothic Tales</i> 1996 anthology of short fiction

American Gothic Tales is an anthology of "gothic" American short fiction. Edited and with an Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates, it was published by Plume in 1996. It featured contributions by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, Anne Rice and others, and included over 40 stories.

<i>We Have Always Lived in the Castle</i> 1962 novel by Shirley Jackson

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a 1962 mystery novel by American author Shirley Jackson. It was Jackson's final work, and was published with a dedication to Pascal Covici, the publisher, three years before the author's death in 1965. The novel is written in the voice of eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood, who lives with her agoraphobic sister and ailing uncle on an estate. Six years before the events of the novel, the Blackwood family experienced a tragedy that left the three survivors isolated from their small village.

<i>Upon the Sweeping Flood and Other Stories</i>

Upon the Sweeping Flood and Other Stories is a collection of short stories written by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 1966 by Vanguard Press.

<i>The Goddess and Other Women</i>

The Goddess and Other Women is a collection comprising 25 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates and published by Vanguard Press in 1974.

Mary Katherine Blackwood is the main character in Shirley Jackson's 1962 novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The eighteen-year-old "Merricat" lives with her remaining family members, Constance and Julian Blackwood, on an estate in Vermont. As a result of a tragedy six years prior the family remains isolated from the surrounding village. The Dictionary of Literary Characters designates a "definition" to Merricat as follows:

Reclusive, psychotic 18-year-old who lives in the family manse with her older sister, Constance Blackwood, and her uncle, Julian Blackwood, as a child, poisoned most of her family in Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

<i>The Sacrifice</i> (Oates novel) 2015 novel by Joyce Carol Oates

The Sacrifice is a 2015 novel by the American writer Joyce Carol Oates. Set in blighted urban New Jersey in the 1980s, it follows a young Black woman, Sybilla, who is discovered in a degraded condition in an abandoned factory after going missing. When she alleges that she was kidnapped, assaulted, and left for dead by a group of white police officers, her cause is taken up by an ambitious and unscrupulous civil rights activist and his lawyer brother, despite evidence of deceit in her story. The events of the novel are based on the real-life Tawana Brawley case, and takes place in a part of New Jersey still suffering from the aftermath of post-war deindustrialization and the 1967 Newark riots.

"Like Mother Used to Make" is a short story by Shirley Jackson. It was originally published in the 1949 short story collection The Lottery and Other Stories by publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It contains the second appearance of James Harris, a recurring character in the collection.

Night-Side: Eighteen Tales is a collection of 18 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published by Vanguard Press in 1977.

The Poisoned Kiss and Other Stories from the Portuguese is a collection of short stories written by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 1975 by Vanguard Press.

References

  1. ↑ Boucher, Anthony (1966-05-01). "Criminals At Large". The New York Times. p. 335. Retrieved 2008-05-25.
  2. ↑ Batts, Grover; McElderry, Michael; McLemee, Scott (1993). "Shirley Jackson: A Register of Her Papers in the Library of Congress" (PDF). American Memory from the Library of Congress. Library of Congress. p. 4. Retrieved 2008-05-25.
  3. ↑ Oates, Joyce Carol (1996-12-29). "Distress Signals". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-05-25.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.