Shirley Jackson is a short story writer known for writing disturbing stories that focus not on horrific events, but on normal events that occur in society. Her stories add new meaning to common events that everyone can relate to, often also making a comment on our society. Three of her stories that have these features are The Witch, An Ordinary Day, With Peanuts, and After You, My Dear Alphonse. Comparing these in terms of theme, style, irony, and characters, the common features of Jackson's work can be identified.
In each of the three stories, the theme makes a comment on our society, using everyday events to accomplish this.
In The Witch, a mother is on the train with her four-year-old son. A man enters and noting that the boy needs entertaining, tells him a story. The story, however, is a horrific one and what would be considered an inappropriate one. The mother must then deal with the social situation of reacting to the man's inappropriateness. The aspect of the story that communicates the theme is that the boy is actually entertained by the story, even though it is considered inappropriate. This leads the reader to consider why these types of stories are so entertaining and why the mother is more disturbed by the story than her son. This leads to the questioning of the conventions of society, especially the idea of what is considered inappropriate.
In An Ordinary Day, With Peanuts the story follows what appears to be a very nice man, John Phillip Johnson, going through his day. On this day, John seems particularly happy and he goes through his day being kind and helping several people. At the end of the story, he returns home to his wife, who tells him she has been bad all day. The twist of the story is when the wife asks John if they...
This twist reveals to the reader that John is not a nice character at all, it is actually his wife who is nice. The theme of this story is the reliance on appearances. Throughout the story, the reader assumes Jack is a nice man, since he acts as one, but this turns out to be incorrect. The theme then is about good and evil and how society judges the goodness of others based on appearances, with this judgement not necessarily being correct.
In After You, My Dear Alphonse, Jackson makes a more direct social comment. The story involves a young white boy, Johnny, who brings home a black friend, Boyd. Johnny's mothers reactions are the key to the story. The mother makes assumptions about the black boy based on his race, while the white son sees no difference between them and treats Boyd as he would treat any other friend. A point that illustrates this is where Boyd comes in carrying the wood and the mother tells Johnny he should not make Boyd carry the wood, assuming that Boyd is carrying the wood because he is black. Johnny replies, telling his mother Boyd is carrying the wood because it is his wood, it came from his place. In the story both Boyd and Johnny are oblivious to any racial prejudices and don't understand that the mother's actions are based on this. The theme of the story is the assumptions and prejudices that society has and what they really accomplish.
The style of each of these stories are similar and show a general characteristic of Jackson's work. Each of the stories take a simple event that every reader could relate to but add a twist to it that adds dimension to the story.
In The Witch, the event is a train ride, with a kind man entertaining a young child by telling…
