43 pages • 1 hour read
Shirley JacksonThe Possibility of Evil
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1965A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Literary Devices
Limited Omniscient Point of View
This story is told in the third-person perspective of its main character, Miss Adela Strangeworth. We have access to her thoughts but not to those of any other character. Except for a moment near the story’s end, when the focus turns to Linda Stewart and to Dave Harris—a pair of local teenagers—we are entirely in Miss Strangeworth’s world.
The smallness and oddity of this world becomes increasingly apparent as the story unfolds. The usage of third-person narration allows us to see Miss Strangeworth from a distance, and to see the difference between the way she regards herself and the way that others regard her. Miss Strangeworth sees herself as a figurehead and an embodiment of local history; her elevated conception of herself is evident in everything that she thinks and does. Linda Stewart, meanwhile, regards her as a simple cheapskate, as is evident in her comment, “Catch old lady Strangeworth sending anybody a check” (427). The comment’s offhanded and bitter tone suggests that this view of Miss Strangeworth is popular, and that Linda is perhaps repeating something that she has overheard many times.
Irony
While this is not an overtly funny story, there is considerable irony in the distance between Miss Strangeworth’s lofty view of herself and her perverse and meanspirited actions. We see her as a figure split in half, who thinks one thing and does another. This is most starkly apparent when Miss Strangeworth writes her strange letters; the letters, deranged and malevolent as they are, are just another part of Miss Strangeworth’s civilized afternoon routine. She follows the letters with a lunch of tomatoes and a “little chop,” and reflects, as she eats alone at her grand table, “People must live graciously, after all” (425).
Foreshadowing
While we do not learn about Miss Strangeworth’s disturbing letter-writing habit until halfway through the story, there are plenty of clues about the disruptive effects of her habit. Such clues are foreshadowing, hints in the narration about what will happen next. The story begins with Miss Strangeworth going out on her morning rounds, during which she notices something amiss with practically everyone she encounters. She thinks of Mr. Lewis the grocer, “[h]e was usually so chipper”; she thinks of Mrs. Harper, another customer at the store, that she could “probably use a good, strong tonic” (422-23). Such repeated observations create a sense of quiet suspense in the story, leading us to suspect that there is indeed something wrong with these townspeople, as well as with Miss Strangeworth herself.
Repetition
Miss Strangeworth reflects often that she is a Strangeworth: “Miss Strangeworth was a Strangeworth of Pleasant Street”; “[T]the world was so large, and there was only one Strangeworth left in it”; “If she had been asked, she would have said that her name, Adela Strangeworth, did not belong on such trash” (425-28). This is Miss Strangeworth’s way of orienting herself, as if she would not recognize herself without her last name and everything that goes along with it. Reinforcing her perceived identity is her way of denying who she is, of disowning her actions and their destructive effect.
We see a similar (if less sinister) repetition in the mundane businesslike exchanges at Mr. Lewis’s grocery store. Mr. Lewis remarks to Miss Strangeworth that it is a “lovely day”; Miss Strangeworth agrees with him and then repeats this observation later; a third customer, Mrs. Harper, also observes that it is a lovely day, at which point Miss Strangeworth and Mr. Lewis both agree with her. As with Miss Strangeworth’s own repeated injunctions to herself, this repeated phrase is a way of smoothing over conflict and strain, and also of maintaining the status quo. It reveals that Miss Strangeworth’s attachment to decorum and ritual does not exist in a vacuum but is simply a warped and heightened version of what goes on around her.
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