Miss Strangeworth's Actions

1003 Words3 Pages

The Influence of Actions People can be influenced by many different things. Being influenced by something or someone can cause a person to act in a certain way, good or bad. In “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson and “A Bolt of White Cloth” by Leon Rooke, the characters demonstrate that a person’s actions are heavily influenced by their surroundings. The characters are influenced by the people around them, the things that are most precious to them and by what they desire. In both these stories, the characters are being influenced by the people around them. In A Possibility of Evil, Miss Strangeworth’s actions are being influenced by the people on Pleasant Street by the actions of certain characters. Jackson writes, “Mr.Lewis would …show more content…

In “A Bolt of White Cloth”, the actions of the husband are being influenced by the mysterious man who shows up at his door and offers their family free cloth. Rooke writes, “”Now look,” I said to him, “what’s wrong with this cloth? Is it going to rot inside a week? Tomorrow is some other stranger going to knock on our door saying we owe him a hundred or five hundred dollars?”” (Rooke,5). Because the mysterious man appears out of nowhere offering his valuable cloth just for the price of love, he jumps to conclusions and accuses the man of scamming them. Because of everything the mysterious man appears to be, the husband’s actions towards him are nasty even though the man is generous towards …show more content…

In The Possibility of Evil, Miss Strangeworth’s roses influence her actions and the way she acts towards tourists on Pleasant Street. Jackson writes, “Miss Strangeworth never gave away any of her roses, although the tourists often asked her. The roses belonged on Pleasant Street and it bothered Miss Strangeworth to think of people wanting to carry them away,” (Jackson, 1). Miss Strangeworth is shown as a cordial and very generous person, especially towards tourists, but when it comes to her roses, she has no desire to give them away to anyone because of the meaning they hold within her family and within her. Because they are so important to her, it causes her be selfish and greedy with them even though she is not perceived as being selfish or greedy. In “A Bolt of White Cloth”, the mystery man’s actions are influenced by what seems to be most important to him: love. Rooke writes, “”You can only buy my cloth with love”... “Should you ever stop loving,” he said, “you shall lose this cloth and all else. You shall wake up one morning and all else will no longer be where you left it” (Rooke,6). The mystery man talks a lot about how important love is to him in the story and by observing his actions in the story we can see that love is very important to him. Because love is so precious to him he is selling his cloth based on how much love a person has due to his belief of love having

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