Most readers know that there is a significant amount of evil in the world, but the real question is, “Where can you find it and how much is in everyone?” Shirley Jackson’s “The Possibility of Evil” and “The Lottery” represent evil in small town USA fluently. Jackson's stories show you cannot trust everyone, and that everything is not what it seems.
Both short stories were surrounded by the idea that evil is in every person or in every town. In “The Lottery”, a small town is having a ‘lottery’ in which the town has a sacrifice yearly in hope for their crops to grow in. The town willingly throws rocks at the unlucky winner, which later takes their life. This ritual has been relinquished by many towns nearby, “Some places have already quit …show more content…
Strangeworth, who has lived in this small town her whole life. Miss. Strangeworth started to detect the evil that has awoken in the town. She decided to try to modify the town herself and started to send mingy letters to each person in the town trying to help the citizens with “complications” they were having. Most mornings, Miss. Strangeworth would start a conversation with other citizens in the town and acts like a normal benevolent person that everyone admires, “And good morning to you, Mr. Lewis,” (The Possibility of Evil) but everything changes when she gets home. Most days she would pull out her colorful letters and starts to write about other citizens of the town. “After thinking for a minute, although she had been phrasing the letter in the back of her mind all the way home, she wrote on a pink sheet: Didn’t you ever see an idiot child before? Some people just shouldn’t have children, should they? She was pleased with the letter. She was fond of doing things exactly right…” (The Possibility of Evil). Unfortunately all of her evil came to an end when she accidentally dropped a disgusting note outside of the post office. “Wearily Miss Strangeworth turned to go home to her quiet bed in her lovely house, and never heard the Harris boy calling to her to say that she had dropped something.” (The
Both short stories were surrounded by the idea that evil is in every person or in every town. In “The Lottery”, a small town is having a ‘lottery’ in which the town has a sacrifice yearly in hope for their crops to grow in. The town willingly throws rocks at the unlucky winner, which later takes their life. This ritual has been relinquished by many towns nearby, “Some places have already quit …show more content…
Strangeworth, who has lived in this small town her whole life. Miss. Strangeworth started to detect the evil that has awoken in the town. She decided to try to modify the town herself and started to send mingy letters to each person in the town trying to help the citizens with “complications” they were having. Most mornings, Miss. Strangeworth would start a conversation with other citizens in the town and acts like a normal benevolent person that everyone admires, “And good morning to you, Mr. Lewis,” (The Possibility of Evil) but everything changes when she gets home. Most days she would pull out her colorful letters and starts to write about other citizens of the town. “After thinking for a minute, although she had been phrasing the letter in the back of her mind all the way home, she wrote on a pink sheet: Didn’t you ever see an idiot child before? Some people just shouldn’t have children, should they? She was pleased with the letter. She was fond of doing things exactly right…” (The Possibility of Evil). Unfortunately all of her evil came to an end when she accidentally dropped a disgusting note outside of the post office. “Wearily Miss Strangeworth turned to go home to her quiet bed in her lovely house, and never heard the Harris boy calling to her to say that she had dropped something.” (The