The First Day By Edward P Jones Analysis

Adversity is not always intentional, unintentional adversity caused by a self-centered attitude is preventable through increasing our mindfulness around our pride and self-satisfaction; a feeling of contentment with one’s self may develop into a haughty, self-centered mindset, often causing adversity for individuals. In Edward P. Jones’s short story The First Day a vain young girl is starting school, we see the mother is more invested in her daughter's well being than her own as her daughter has nice brand new clothing, they meet a boastful lady and her daughter at registration who enjoy flaunting their riches and looking down on the less fortunate. The Possibility of Evil by Shirley Jackson is a short story focusing on a well-respected yet …show more content…
Jones. A young girl requiring black leather shoes, braided hair, peach scented hair products and perfume for her first day of kindergarten is quite high maintenance and appearance focused if she believes “My shoes are my greatest joy, black patent-leather miracles, and when one is nicked at the toe later that morning in class, my heart will break.” For this child a broken heart caused by something there which only projects a classier, wealthier look is quite sad for this means she values her appearance more than her relationships. She is so vain that when another young girl has lovely curls in her hair, she is not able to appreciate them “some of them are beginning to droop and this makes me happy.” She had her braids in perfect tact which in her mind made her beauty superior to her in at least one way.She has …show more content…
The Possibility of Evil features Ms. Adela Strangeworth, an arrogant elderly woman who writes anonymous letters to people in the town telling them what's wrong with them solely based on superstition, for “Miss Strangeworth never concerned herself with facts.” She had been writing these letters for the past year since “The town where she lived had to be kept clean and sweet, but people everywhere were lustful and evil and degraded, and needed to be watched.” For she needed the town to remain in pristine condition, just like her house. And this she knew was done for “Miss Strangeworth stopped at her own front gate, as she always did, and looked with deep pleasure at her house, with the red and pink and white roses massed along the narrow lawn, and the rambler going up along the porch; and the neat, unbelievably trim lines of the house itself, with its slimness and its washed white look.” The roses are quite significant because they are a family “heirloom, “My grandmother planted these roses, and my mother tended them, just as I do.” This is why when the “tourists who sometimes passed through the town and stopped to admire Miss Strangeworth’s roses” never were given a rose. Miss Strangeworth believed they belonged on Pleasant Street with the house. Her house was not