Themes of "The Possibility of Evil"
One of the theme of this short story is "Looks can be deceiving." Miss Strangeworth looked like an innocent old lady who was just proud of her town but she had a dark secret underneath all of that. No one would have expected her to write those letters. No one really knew that she had a big secret because in the beginning of the story, it just seems like an average town rather than a place with evil. I didn't even imagine her writing the letters in the beginning.
"She had been writing her letters—sometimes two or three every day for a week, sometimes no more than one in a month—for the past year. She never got any answers, of course, because she never signed her name. If she had been asked, she would have said that her name, Adela Strangeworth, a name honored in the town for so many years, did not belong on such trash. 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; the world was so large, and there was only one Strangeworth left in it."
This quote shows the theme because Miss Strangeworth says that she doesn't want her name on those letters because she had a clean reputation to protect and if she signed her name on these letters, her name would be ruined.
Another theme is "Underneath a good moral, there's a bad one". Miss Strangeworth tells many times in the story that she just wants to protect her town from evil. But clearly, she loved drama and wanted to start it. She enjoyed having people hurt and feeling like she had power over people. I also feel like she wanted the feeling that she knew everything that went around 'her' town.
"It was Miss Strangeworth's duty to keep her town alert to it. There were so many wicked people in the world and only one Strangeworth left in the town. Besides, Miss Strangeworth liked writing her letters."
This quote shows that Miss Strangeworth felt like she was doing a good thing, but it also says that she liked writing her letters.
"She had been writing her letters—sometimes two or three every day for a week, sometimes no more than one in a month—for the past year. She never got any answers, of course, because she never signed her name. If she had been asked, she would have said that her name, Adela Strangeworth, a name honored in the town for so many years, did not belong on such trash. 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; the world was so large, and there was only one Strangeworth left in it."
This quote shows the theme because Miss Strangeworth says that she doesn't want her name on those letters because she had a clean reputation to protect and if she signed her name on these letters, her name would be ruined.
Another theme is "Underneath a good moral, there's a bad one". Miss Strangeworth tells many times in the story that she just wants to protect her town from evil. But clearly, she loved drama and wanted to start it. She enjoyed having people hurt and feeling like she had power over people. I also feel like she wanted the feeling that she knew everything that went around 'her' town.
"It was Miss Strangeworth's duty to keep her town alert to it. There were so many wicked people in the world and only one Strangeworth left in the town. Besides, Miss Strangeworth liked writing her letters."
This quote shows that Miss Strangeworth felt like she was doing a good thing, but it also says that she liked writing her letters.