In Eudora Welty's Why I Live At The P. O.

Harper Lee, an American novelist, said, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” Harper Lee’s quote contrasts to Eudora Welty’s story, “Why I live at the P.O.” because the narrator is in the first-person viewpoint and the protagonist does not account for other perspectives, such as her sister, Stella-Rondo’s, point of view. Throughout the story, the protagonist would not listen to her sister; however, if she would have, she may not have had to leave her family in the end. Welty wrote in the first-person point of view, which does not help the audience understand all characters point of view because we do not know all of Stella-Rondo’s background or what happened between the protagonist and Mr. Whitaker, which would have helped the audience decide if the narrator was in the wrong. The narrator states, at the beginning of the story, her thoughts of her sister because of the first-person point of view that permits the audience to learn, firsthand, her feelings toward her sister. The viewpoint allows insight on involvement, unreliability, and experiences of the narrator.
The protagonist changes the story because of jealousy towards her precisely one-year- younger sister, Stella-Rondo. The protagonist was …show more content…
The protagonist is unreliable because she is a cunning sister, who makes the audience believe she is trying to understand why her sister came home, but in her mind, she thinks Mr. Whitaker left Stella-Rondo and will stand by her judgment. The protagonist attempts to hide the fact that she is jealous of her sister who ended up with Mr. Whitaker, but is satisfied when she returned home because “I said, from the beginning, he’d up and leave her.” Being an unreliable narrator affects the story because of the outcome. If the protagonist were not an unreliable narrator by being manipulator, she would have never had to leave her