Why I Live At The P. O. By Eudora Welty Analysis

Being an older child in a family does not always have its benefits. Sometimes it puts you at a disadvantage when having younger brothers/sisters. Your parents might let them get away with more than they ever let you get away with, or they might even take up for them more than they would you. Having your parents and relatives take up for them in times that you know they should be either upset or disappointed in them might make you try to point it out to them. It would create an internal battle with your emotions for your brother/sister and your parents and relatives. Eudora Welty gives us a story of an older sister that feels this exact way in “Why I live at the P.O.” The older sister, which is the narrator, tells us from the beginning of the …show more content…
She tries to turn them by telling them lies to get the relatives to get mad at the older sister. First, she tells Papa-Daddy, her mother’s father, against her by telling him “Papa-Daddy, Sister says she fails to understand why you don’t cut off your beard.”(Welty 661 par.14) The older sister is completely surprised by the situation and start trying to tell him she hadn’t said it. The older sister is so mad about the getting in trouble for something she did not say that she leaves the table. Later on in the evening Stella-Rondo strikes again, saying to her Uncle, “Sister says, ‘Uncle Rondo certainly does look like a fool in that pink kimono!”(Welty 665 par.89) After turning her Uncle against her older sister, she had everyone in the family against her. The older sister was outnumbered and tired of having lies told to get them to turn them against …show more content…
During the night her Uncle decided to get back at her for what her younger sister had lied about. He sat off fireworks in her room at 6:30 in the morning. After that had happened she had made her mind up to move to the P.O. to stay. She took the fan blowing on the family while playing cards, she took the pillow from behind Papa-Daddy, and her bracelet from her younger sister’s draw. After packing all this up her family had a change of mind and tried to talk her into staying by saying, “Now why don’t you just sit down and play Casino?”(Welty 667 par.115) Older sister didn’t want to hear any of their peace offerings. She told them that if they could see her when they dropped off their mail or picked it up. The whole family tells her if she leaves that they will never “…darken the door to that post office again…” (Welty 666 par.112) The family went from being against the older sister, to briefly trying to get her to stay, and then turning back to being against her for wanting to leave her