Analysis Of Shirley Jackson's 'The Possibility Of Evil'

She’s judgemental and got exactly what she had coming for her; She’s the POV character from Shirley Jackson’s “The Possibility of Evil”. Third-person single vision is displayed through a narrator not being a part of the story, and the main character, or the POV character, is the only view the reader can see; therefore, the character becomes more developed and the reader becomes more interested. Jackson chose third-person single vision POV for “The Possibility of Evil” because being in the head of only one character causes readers to have a closer connection with the character, all while maintaining suspense.

When an author writes in third-person single vision, the reader gets an intimate look into the mind of the POV character, which works especially well when the POV character has a unique and different view than most. As some people believe, switching to omniscient would be the ideal POV because the view of others is needed to display Miss Strangeworth’s letter fell out of the mailbox; however, since the author only switches once, third-person single vision is still the better option as it is implemented more throughout the story.

In the story,

As others claim, suspense is better kept with first-person view, since the narrator can disclose certain elements, but because the narrator can’t get into the minds of the other characters, not much is disclosed anyways. Throughout the story, suspense is an important part. To explain, the reader wants to know the consequences for Miss Strangeworth’s letter, and the reveal of her roses being destroyed would not have been as satisfying if we knew what the character was going to do. Third-person single vision allowed the author to describe the world differently than the POV character would, yet also keep suspence, “The entire story is filtered through the point-of-view character’s consciousness” (Gotham