Majority of the time when a person is the youngest in his or her family that person often gets what his or her heart desires. The short story, “Why I Live at the P. O.” by Eudora Welty, is about a woman, Sister, and her little sister Stella-Rondo who is turning her family against Sister. Stella-Rondo is the youngest between Sister and herself. As they grew up, Sister would sit and watch Stella- Rondo get what she wanted. This spoiling of Stella-Rondo caused Sister to become jealous. Throughout the story Sister’s family begins to turn against her and treat her differently. Sister brings most of the unfair treatment on herself because of the way she treats Stella-Rondo and due to the fact Sister is so set in her stubborn ways. Sister brings on the unfair treatment upon herself because of the way she treats Stella-Rondo due to her own jealousy. When Sister and Stella-Rondo were growing up, Stella-Rondo always got whatever she wanted. Then after having these …show more content…
things for a short period of time, Stella-Rondo would throw them away and move on to something new. As seen in, Sister making the statement “she’s always had anything she wanted and then she’d just throw it away” (1). Sister was jealous because she did not receive the same spoiling treatment as Stella-Rondo; she does not always get what she wants. Adding fuel to the flame of hate that Sister has towards Stella-Rondo, Stella-Rondo steals a way and marries Sister's boyfriend, Mr.Whitaker. This betrayal only reinforces Sisters belief and statement that Stella-Rondo, "she's spoiled" (1). Because of all this stored jealousy and hatred Sisters has towards Stella-Rondo, Sister begins her verbal assault on Stella-Rondo as soon as she moves back in at the family house with her two year old adopted child. This is seen when Sister says things like "I think I would do well not to criticize so freely if I were you and came home with a two-year-old child I had never said a word about, and no explanation whatever about my separation" (4). Sister's jealousy and anger is shown again when she says, "He left her-you mark my words, that's Mr. Whitaker. I know Mr. Whitaker. After all, I knew him first. I said from the beginning he'd up and leave her. I foretold every single thing that's happened" (8). These are just some of the hateful things Sister said in order to hurt Stella-Rondo because Sister can not control her over whelming jealousy. Sisters stubbornness impairs her from being able to see past herself and her jealous.
It is because of this stubbornness, Sister will never be able to let go of the past and begin a new healthy relationship with her family. This thought is supported by when Sister says, "It's too late to stop me now, I says. You should have tried that yesterday. I'm going to the P.O. and the only way you can possibly see me is to visit me there" (8). When Sister was given the opportuity to apologize and start fresh with her family, Sister proclaims, "I haven't got time, I'm leaving" (9). This is just another example of Sister, being so set in her ways, that she can not care for anyone but herself. The quote, "And if Stella-Rondo should come back this minute, on bended knees, and attempt to explain the incidents oh her life with Mr. Whitaker shows Sister's inability to change because of her iron like stubbornness. Being stubborn causes Sister to treat others unfairly, and bringing it back on
herself. As seen by the evidence, Sister is the cause of all her issues between her family and herself. Instead of Sister being overjoyed in seeing her younger sibling and new niece, Sister’s jealousy and tunnel vision only allows her to feel jealousy and mistreatment by her family. In this story, Sister's anger and beliefs are only reinforced by her stubbornness. We as people naturally find it easier to choose are ourselves over the needs of others. This is truly the path to societies ultimate down.
She ponders the importance of what her sister were fighting for, and in the end, whether or not their relentless efforts were made in
The reader is forced into the role of a character that already has some developments. Walton’s sister is a character that exists prior to the story; this can be seen by the way Walton treats his subject. Because the reader is the audience with her, the reader is pushed into that role, but not to become a part of the story, only to develop the relationship with Walton.
“My Body, My Closet” has detailed evidences that are relevant to her thesis. All her evidences are up-do date and verifiable. However, Peterson has a slight slant when providing her her supporting quotations and statistics.
In Why I Live at the P.O. something that I discovered to be very ordinary was the confrontation of Stella-Rondo telling lies about the narrator (sister). There are two instances when this happens, the first lie is Stella-Rondo says “Papa-Daddy, Sister says she fails to understand why you don’t cut off your beard” (438 Welty). The second lie is when Stella-Rondo says, “Sister has been devoting this solid afternoon to sneering out my bedroom window at the way you look” (443 Welty). By Stella-Rondo pinning these lies on her sister it turns the family members against her sister and for the family to favor Stella-Rondo over sister. It all started too with sister assuming that Stella-Rondo’s baby is not adopted “She was the spit-image of Papa-Daddy….
Stella-Rondo brings out jealousy in Sister that causes tension between them. Sister hates that Stella-Rondo married Mr. Whitaker since Sister supposedly had him first. She feels like Stella-Rondo broke them up by lying. Most likely, Sister is upset because she was not the one to end up with the guy she liked, but she displays her feelings childishly. Sister’s snide comments towards her sister are the real reason that Stella-Rondo turns their family against her. Stella-Rondo’s lies about her daughter, Shirley T., increase Sister’s jealous feelings. Stella-Rondo claims that Shirley-T. is adopted, but Sister does not believe her. Sister wants her family to see through Stella-Rondo’s lies and realize that this two-year old child is not adopted. She points out that Shirley-T. is the “spitting image of Papa-Daddy” (359). Sister cannot stand that Stella-Rondo left Mr. Whitaker after only staying married to him for two years. The fact that “the first thing she did was separate! From Mr. Whitaker!” when Stella-Rondo got married and moved away infuriates Sister (359). Consequently, Sister makes sure her family knows that she had him first. In the heat of the moment at the end of the story, Sister starts saying that Mr. Whitaker left Stella-Rondo, not vice versa, which only builds up more tension.
Throughout the story, it has been Sister who has tried to persuade the reader to take her side in the debacle with her family. The truth is that it was Sister who caused the entire dispute that is going on with her obsession to compete with her sister that goes back to her childhood where she feels that Stella-Rondo is spoiled and continues to be spoiled up to the end following Sister’s desperate need for attention.
Sister’s perspective is very self-centered and designed to manipulate the reader for selfish purposes. When the story first begins, Sister is trying to get the reader to see that “Of course [she] went with Mr., Whitaker first…and Stella Rondo broke [them up].” Sister wants the readers to know this piece of information so we will think she is a victim in the story. This is a way of getting us, the readers, on “her side” so we will begin to think like her and dislike the person or people that she dislikes.
The sister's fights are usually underlined with their desires to make each other into better people. The sisters are connected by their pursuit a better life causing them to push each other towards their goals. When Emily gets herself
Marriage is a concept that society takes extremely inaccurately. It is not something one can fall back from. Once someone enter it there is no way back. In Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” she tells the story of Delia, a washerwoman whom Sykes, her husband, mistreats while he ventures around with other women and later attempts to kill Delia to open a way for a second marriage with one of his mistresses. By looking at “Sweat” through the feminist and historical lens Hurston illustrates the idea of a sexist society full of men exploiting and breaking down women until men dispose of them.
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resorts, and the glitches in the health care system. Kincaid was an established writer for The New Yorker when she wrote this book, and it can be safely assumed that majority of her readers had, at some point in their lives, been tourists. I have been a tourist so many times before and yet, I had never stopped to consider what happens behind the surface of the countries I visit until I read this essay. Kincaid aims to provoke her readers; her style of writing supports her goal and sets both her and her essay apart. To the reader, it sounds like Kincaid is attacking the beautiful island, pin-pointing the very things that we, as tourists, wish to ignore. No tourist wants to think about faeces from the several tourists in the hotel swimming alongside them in the oceans, nor do they want to think about having accidents and having to deal with the hospital. It seems so natural that a tourist would not consider these, and that is exactly what Kincaid has a problem with.
Home is about a Korean War veteran named Frank Money who needs to save his sister from dying. The story starts with Frank describing a scene from his childhood with his sister. They were in a field with horses he describes the horses being beautiful and brutal, but on the other side some men were burying a dead African American in a hole. When Frank becomes an adult he is soon committed to a mental hospital after his time in the war. Frank soon gets a letter stating that his sister was in danger and could die if he did not hurry to save her. Then he remembers his family being evicted and not being able to take any possessions. Frank then escapes the bastion of the hospital on his way to save his sister from the mysterious person. On his way Frank Money meets many different people who offer their assistance to him because he is not wealthy. Frank makes his way to Atlanta to continue the search for is sister but is attacked by gang of thugs, who steal his wallet and hit him with a pipe. After trying to find his sister he finds his sister being an experimental patient to Dr. Beau, a doctor who conducted experiments on colored civilians. After Frank saves his sister he takes her to some friends to help her get better from the experiments. While there his sister starts to make a quilt while she got better, which they eventually laid over the man’s bones, who was lynched, when they were kids. They nailed a sign to the tree as a sign of respect showing that someone was buried there beneath the tree. Finally, after nailing the sign, Frank looks at the tree for a while thinking of everything that has happened, then his sister Cee walks over and tells him it’...
The Other Sister is about a family with a sibling that has a developmental disability also known as mildly mentally retardation (MMR), mild developmental disability, or mild intellectual disorder (MID). Carla Tate is our main character that has MMR as a disability. She is a young women, twenty-four years old, with a slender but beautiful appearance. Carla has just graduated from a special education boarding school and is returning home to her family. Carla’s mother (Elizabeth Tate) is overbearingly protective, does not appreciate all of the abilities that Carla has acquired. Her father (Bradley Tate) is a recovering alcoholic who is sympathetic and supportive of Carla, who at the same time has to deal with his domineering wife. Carla has two sisters Heather (who happens to be a lesbian) and Caroline (who is planning a wedding). Carla’s sister quickly bond again upon Carla’s return. They are supportive of Carla and her abilities.
In conclusion, co-dependency and rivalry is very common in the world today. Though it is not a big issue out in the open, it is an emotional attachment that only one can define. In this short story the two main aspects of having siblings is the theme which revolves around codependency and rivalry. Having siblings is a part of everyday life and problems do occur which sometimes makes a person, or changes a person in ways. In this situation, Pete and Donald are completely different people but they are in fact very dependent upon one another.
“Spinster” by Sylvia Plath is a poem that consists of a persona, who in other words serves as a “second self” for the author and conveys her innermost feelings. The poem was written in 1956, the same year as Plath’s marriage to Ted Hughes, who was also a poet. The title suggests that the persona is one who is not fond of marriage and the normal rituals of courtship as a spinster is an unmarried woman, typically an older woman who is beyond the usual age of marriage and may never marry. The persona of the poem is a woman who dislikes disorder and chaos and finds relationships to be as unpredictable as the season of spring, in which there is no sense of uniformity. In this poem, Plath not only uses a persona to disclose her feelings, but also juxtaposes the seasons and their order (or lack thereof) and relates them to the order that comes with solitude and the disorder that is attributed with relationships. She accomplishes this through her use of formal diction, which ties into both the meticulous structure and develops the visual imagery.
The story Little Women takes place at a time when women were taking on uncustomary roles like physical laborer, family protector and provider, and military volunteer while their husbands served during the Civil War. Keeping within the boundaries of the time, Louisa May Alcott uses herself and her own three sisters to create this classical novel from personal experiences. Each sister is different. They each set goals and dreams for their selves whether it goes along with their contemporary society or not. With the assistance of their mother, friends and experiences, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy struggle between their personal expectations and society’s expectations as they plan for their future and choose their destinies.