Shirley Jackson Is a Short Story Writer

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 can change back tomorrow, with John saying yes. 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 the child a story. This is a seemingly innocent event, except that Jackson makes the story told a disturbing one. This adds a whole new dimension to the story, while making the story one that every reader could easily imagine happening.

In An Ordinary Day, With Peanuts the entire story tells of everyday events, simply following a kind man on what appears to be an average day. The event that changes the entire story is the twist at the end, which again adds a whole new dimension to the story.

After You, My Dear Alphonse also involves the common event of a mother entertaining a new friend her son has brought home. The interest in this event is created by the mother's reaction to the boy.

Each of these stories also contains another feature of Jackson's writing, which is her use of irony. In each of these stories, irony works effectively to make the point of the story.

In The Witch, the irony is in the fact that the mother sees the story as inappropriate when it has achieved exactly what a story is meant to achieve, entertained the boy. This irony leads to the questioning of our society and what the conventions of appropriateness really mean.

In An Ordinary Day, With Peanuts, the irony lies in the fact that all is not what it seems, the man who appears to be kind is actually the opposite. Again, it is the irony of the story that reflects the theme, in showing that appearances can be deceiving.

In After You, My Dear Alphonse, the mother's actions are based on what she considers to be socially correct. The irony in this is that it is the son, with no concept of social correctness, who is actually acting more properly. It is this irony that leads to the questioning of what social correctness really achieves.