A Study Guide for Shirley Jackson's "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Shirley Jackson's "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535830270

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One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts

Shirley Jackson

1955

Introduction

One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts, by Shirley Jackson, is a typical Jackson story depicting everyday events in a normal setting that turn out to be a little strange and perhaps not so ordinary after all. One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts was published in January 1955 in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, to which Jackson sold several of her stories. This short story was subsequently selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories: 1956. It was also the inspiration for the title of a 1996 collection of her previously uncollected and unpublishedwork, Just an Ordinary Day, edited by two of her children, Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman Stewart.

One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts is a story about good and evil that appears straightforward, if a bit strange, on the surface yet contains a twist at the end. The main character, Mr. Johnson, spends his day wandering the city, committing random acts of kindness as he hands out money, advice, his time, candy, and peanuts to people and animals. His generosity seems to have no limit—or does it? One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts comments on life in the big city and the two-sided nature of good and evil.

Author Biography

Shirley Jackson was born on December 14, 1916, in San Francisco, California, to Leslie and Geraldine Jackson. Financially comfortable and socially aware, Jackson's parents—especially her mother—struggled with raising their headstrong but extremely talented daughter. One year before Shirley was to graduate from high school, the Jackson family relocated to the other side of the country, settling in Rochester, New York, where her father had found