The Possibility Of Evil

3 Pages 692 Words

In the short story “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson, Miss Adela Strangeworth is an elderly woman living on Pleasant Street who is known for her beautiful roses. The setting is taking place in a close-knit town, which plays the essential role in her motives for evil. Strangeworth thinks she owns the town and everyone inside it. She believes there to be great evil among everyone but, herself. She writes letters throughout the story to people in her town and telling them all the negatives about them. She doesn’t postmark her name so no one is to know who is writing them these letters. She leaves them to believe it could never be her nor would she want it to be her to be blamed for such a thing. Until, she mistakenly drops one of the letters and is seen doing it.
Strangeworth goes about her everyday with having her usual trips downtown to the grocery and making sure to say hello to everyone she passes. She makes comments to everyone whether it is negative or not she is always being the judge of character. Adela Strangeworth’s role was one she chose herself. . Adela Strangeworth was involved with everyone’s business, “This was, after all, her town, and these were her people; if one of them was in trouble, she ought to know about it” (JACKSON 469). She wrote them secret, mean and hateful letters in reciprocation to their evil actions, which began to ruin their lives. Her nosiness, not the towns, drove her to her final fate. Adela Strangeworth resorts to evil actions in order to gain control over what she desired. “Her letters all dealt with the more negotiable stuff of suspicion” (JACKSON 467), the letters she writes are all assumptions, lacking evidence and facts for such accusations. Adela Strangeworth’s acts were so cruel in the public’s eye that they destroy her rose bushes. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines cruel as “ causing pain and suffering to others” (DICTONARY 189). Her decisi...