“Haven’t you ever seen an idiot child before? Some people just shouldn’t have children should they?” (Jackson, 1941, p. 169) These horrible words written by the most adored and looked up to woman in town; the deceptive perfectionist herself, Miss Adela Strangeworth. Strangeworth lives a simple life on Pleasant Street. She knows everyone in town, is friendly and nice, and grows the most beautiful roses, but every so often she sees what looks to her like a great injustice, and takes up the task of ‘righting the wrong’. She is of course wrong and is just being a terrible person, but in her delusions she is fixing everything wrong in the world. Miss Strangeworth is a delusional perfectionist with a god complex. Throughout the story she manipulates
Like any good character, Mrs. Strangeworth has understandable desires. The possibility of evil the story entails is from Miss Strangeworth ideology of what she sees is the truth. In turn, she writes deagroitive letter to her townspeople, feeling that a solid plan for stopping the evil in the town she's lives in. For her, writing these letters let herself feel a sense of pride for the town she deeply love. “The sun was shining, the air was fresh and clear after the night’s heavy rain, and everything in Miss Strangeworth’s little town looked washed and bright.” (Shirley 1) If her desire wasn’t to make a better town, she would have never written such letters. Mrs. Strangeworth has desire like any other character with well intentioned, but with ability to take it to the extreme makes stand out from the crowd.
There is no doubt that Miss. Strangeworth is not an easy person to deal with, let alone live with, and although her character is fictional, there are many people with the same personality. We can tell quite easily that she is a very meticulous woman, with a lot of perfectionist tendencies, a few of which are to nitpick people’s lives and make sure that even the most minute detail is up to her standards. I know of someone with these attributes and as difficult as they are to deal with, with their list of requirements to be met and their eagle-eye for detail in even the smallest things, they mean the best, and are always trying to help, despite the possible repercussions.
Marie had just traveled from her hometown of Ville Rose, where discarding your child made you wicked, to the city of Port-Au-Prince, where children are commonly left on the street. Marie finds a child that she thinks could not be more beautiful, “I thought she was a gift from Heaven when I saw her on the dusty curb, wrapped in a small pink blanket, a few inches away from a sewer as open as a hungry child’s yawn” (79). Marie has suffered many miscarriages, so she takes this child as if it were her own, “I swayed her in my arms like she was and had always been mine” (82). Marie’s hope for a child has paid off, or so it seems. Later, it is revealed that the child is, in fact, dead, and Marie fabricated a story to sanction her hopes and distract her from the harsh reality of her life, “I knew I had to act with her because she was attracting flies and I was keeping her spirit from moving on… She smelled so bad that I couldn’t even bring myself to kiss her without choking on my breath” (85). Her life is thrown back into despair as her cheating husband accuses her of killing children for evil purposes and sends her to
In the short story “The Possibility Of Evil “ by Shirley Jackson was several symbols to tell her story about Miss Strangeworth. One symbol she uses is her name Strangeworth. She was a strange women but everyone thought she was normal and nice, but in reality she was mean and strange, she thought she was better than everyone else. Another symbol she uses is the letter Miss.Strangeworth sent to people. They mean more than just letters because they show how she really is, she is showing her true colors. Finally another symbol was her flowers, the flowers meant that she was better than anyone else. The flowers were fancy, Miss. Strangeworth thought she was elegant and polite . Certain symbols have certain meaning in today's culture because they
In her final letter to her mother, Eliza admits her wrong doings. She tells her mother she ignored all the things she was told. All their advice fell on her deaf ears. She explains that she had fallen victim to her own indiscretion. She had become the latest conquest of “a designing libertine,” (Foster 894). She knew about Sanford’s reputation, she knew his intentions, and she knew that he was married, yet she still started a relationship with him. And her blatant disregard for facts and common sense caused her unwed pregnancy and premature demise. Eliza Wharton had nobody to blame for her situation but herself. She ignored warnings, advice, common sense, and other options available to her. She chose her ill fated path and had to suffer the consequences.
Miss. Strangeworth is the worst character from the other six short stories read. Throughout the story The Possibility of Evil Miss. Adela Strangeworth would write mean and
On September 14, 1879, Margaret Sanger was born in Corning, New York. She was the sixth child of eleven children and realized early what being part of a large family meant; just making due. Although her family was Roman Catholic both her mother and father were of Irish descent. Her mother, Anne Purcell had a sense of beauty that was expressed through and with flowers. Her father was an Irish born stonemason whose real religion was social radicalism. Her father was a free thinker and strong believer in eugenics which meant Margaret possessed some of the same values. (Sanger, Margaret) Eugenics is the belief that one race is better than a different race just because they are not like them, kind of like Hitler and the holocaust. “He expected me to be grown up at the age of ten.” (Source 4.3 page 30) Coming from a family of eleven children she did have to grow up fast. Faster than most kids should have to. She left her house as a teenager and came back when she needed to study nursing. It was during this time that Margaret worked as a maternity nurse helping in the delivery of babies to immigrant women. She saw illegal abortions, women being overwhelmed by poverty, to many children, and women dying because they had no knowledge of how to prevent one pregnancy after another. This reminded her of the fact that her own mother had eighteen pregnancies, eleven children, and died at the age of forty-nine. Margaret dropped out of school and moved in with her sister. She ended up teaching first grade children and absolutely hated it. She hated children at that time. When Margaret was a child herself however, she would dream about living on the hill where all the wealthy people lived. She would dream of playing tennis and wearing beautiful c...
Miss Strangeworth’s character can be analyzed by considering what she does. Miss Strangeworth is a selfish person. In the story it quotes,”Miss Strangeworth told the tourist with a pretty little dimple showing off her lip, she sometimes caught herself thinking the town belonged to her.” The other selfish is in the story as well. It quotes,”When tourist would ask about the roses, she wouldn’t give them away.” In other words her selfish side is she is mean to people or thinks everything belongs to her.
As society changes around us, we spot things we never noticed before: high divorce rates, murder rates, and drug use just to name a few. James Riddley-Scott and Mary Shelley noticed and had a fear of child abandonment. In Frankenstein, Shelley explores this subject through the viewpoint of a man, Victor, who creates a child so hideous that he cannot bear to look at it, and consequently deserts it. In Blade Runner, Scott explores this matter through a businessman, Tyrell, who makes replicants of humans, the Nexus 6, gives them only four years to live, and sells them as slaves. The children of these creators turn out to be smarter and more human than expected, and revolt against the way society treats them, giving us all a lesson in parenting and child development.
In an age when many love claiming that “racism doesn’t exist,” it’s important to examine the internal consequences of current and past acts of racism, of perpetuating ideals of a blonde haired, blue-eyed girl. The Bluest Eye shows the tragic consequences of girls taught to hate themselves. It shows what happens when a man is powerless to hate the white men causing him harm, and turns his anger on his own wife and family instead. Of a man, who takes the label of a crazy supernatural to make his living, demonized by white society and taking their projection and becoming the monster that they fear he is. But it also offers a bit of hope. In the direst of circumstances, it is the children, the children that make the novel so great, who have the power for change. Frieda and her sister give up their hard earned money to try and save Pecola and her baby. They don’t understand why she is so shunned; they only know of basic human love and dignity. It is Pecola, on her heart-breaking quest for the very bluest eyes, who compels Soaphead Church to write a striking letter to God. The outcasts of the outcasts, like Pecola’s prostitute friends, are willing to come together as well. Often, change works its way up from the bottom. Unfortunately, change never comes quickly enough in the life of Pecola, or in the lives of many of the other characters. The novel stays starkly honest. It didn’t get better in Frieda or Pecola’s lifetimes. But it’s
Torey Hayden’s novel One Child is a heartwarming personal account of how even the smallest amounts of love can change someone. One Child revolves around a Special Education teacher, Tory Hayden, as well as her class and helpers. The main child that Hayden speaks of is Sheila, who was placed with Hayden after she had lured a young boy into the forest, tied him to a tree, and burned him almost to death. Hayden describes Sheila as having “matted hair, hostile eyes and a very bad smell” upon their first meeting (Hayden 16). Sheila lives in a dilapidated house with her father who abuses, belittles, and isolates her. Her past is maimed by a mother who abandoned her when she was four, leaving her in the care of a neglectful father. These circumstances cause her to lash out at any one she comes into contact with. Hayden provides a seemingly innocuous environment that Sheila flourishes in with the help of the love that her teacher provides. The main idea of Hayden’s novel, presented through her use of rhetorical strategies, is that even by offering comfort to an individual for a short amount...
7. We need to believe in the possibility of evil just like miss strangeworth because there is always going to be evil in this world. The narrator wanted to show the difference between making mistakes and true evil so we know not to make the same evil decisions that Miss Strangeworth made or any other decisions that are being pressured on us.
First of all, as the story began we met Maggie, a shy girl who lived her life in the darkness of her sister Dee’s shadow. Their mother was hardworking and spent her days on the farm working to offer a better life for her daughters. Raising children alone is a backbreaking task. Although they lived a modest life her children never went without. She gave them a home and food to eat, everything from killing hogs to breaking ice was done for her children. There lies the dedication seen in a good parent.
It is not without a hint of irony that the nation’s Socialist-Left does not care about children before they are born. Never the less, soon after they become a precious commodity that must be protected at all costs – including everyone’s fundamental human rights. Those who are merely a cluster of cells or some other humanity denying pejorative in
...“the hen became the queen of the house… everyone knew it except the hen.” (Lispector, 49) Having children is both expected from a woman and praised by the society. But maybe Lispector never realized the appraisal of the society towards her work and that she was continuing life as her existentialist mindset only allowed her to think negatively.