Sister Rivalry “Why I Live at the P.O. was written by Eudora Welty in 1941. “Why I Live at the P.O.” takes place on the Fourth of July in China Grove, Mississippi. Eudora Welty born in 1909 and passed away from pneumonia in 2001, in Jackson, Mississippi. During the Great Depression Welty worked as a photographer. “Her inspiration behind writing Why I Live at the P.O. came from a photograph she took of a woman ironing in the back of a small post office” (Sexton). Sister, the first-person narrator, in the short story “Why I Live at the P.O., causes external conflicts within her family as a result of her inner-conflicts, such as lack of self-confidence and a demanding need to be the center of attention” (Sexton). This story is written in Sister’s …show more content…
She tells Papa Daddy that Sister ridiculed his beard and Uncle Rondo that Sister laughed at him for wearing her pink kimono. Uncle Rondo then punishes Sister by throwing firecrackers into her bedroom the next morning. Sister often appeals to the reader to witness what she actually said. Throughout the story, the family supports Stella Rondo, reminding Sister that at least Stella left home and managed to find a man. Sister reminds them that as China Grove's postmistress of Mississippi's second smallest post office she has her own form of independence and has control of the family's communication with the outside world. Sister casts aspersions about Shirley T.'s state of mind because she has not spoken a word since her arrival. She reminds Mama of how Mr. Whitaker used to drink. Mama approaches Shirley T. who starts to sing Popeye the Sailor Man, proving Sister wrong. An argument builds concerning the parentage of Shirley T. and the whereabouts of Mr. Whitaker. Sister insists that Stella Rondo has been deserted by Mr. Whitaker. The family refuses to contemplate this possibility. By the end of the story, Sister has become so infuriated by the apparent favoritism shown towards Stella Rondo …show more content…
Jesus tells his disciples a parable of the Prodigal son. But first, there is this family that has two sons. The youngest son asks his father for his inheritance. The youngest son then took the inheritance and ran away to spend it all. Then he ran into trouble. He ran out of money so he came back home. Instead of being punished he was welcomed with open arms. The older brother was furious. The older brother does everything right and never gets welcomed the way his brother does. This relates a lot to “Why I live at the P.O”. The oldest sister was getting along fine with her family until the youngest sister (Stella Rondo) decided to come back. They were excited to see Stella Rondo; Sister was jealous. Sister wants all the attention not the other way around. Sister then becomes petty and try to turn the family against Stella Rondo but turns out that Stella-Rondo becomes that master of the game. Sister tries to accuse Stella Rondo of lying but the family does not buy it. They do not believe sister but according to sister they believe Stella Rondo and rather take Stella Rondo’s side. Sister accuses her of lying but how do we know that sister is not the one lying. So at the end of the story Stella Rondo has turned everyone in the family against Sister. Sister got tired of all the ridicule and decides to take “what was hers” and leave. Sister then goes to the P.O. (post office) and decides to live
Eudora Alice Welty practically spent her whole life living in Mississippi. Mississippi is the setting in a large portion of her short stories and books. Most of her stories take place in Mississippi because she focuses on the manners of people living in a small Mississippi town. Writing about the lives of Mississippi folk is one main reason Welty is a known author. Welty’s stories are based upon the way humans interact in social encounters. She focuses on women’s situations and consciousness. Another thing she mostly focuses on is isolation. In almost all of Welty’s earlier stories the main character is always being isolated. Throughout her short stories, a hidden message is always evident. Eudora Welty does a wonderful job of exposing social prejudices in the form of buried messages.
The author uses the denial and concealment of truth in order to reiterate that in the closed environment of the household, pampered upbringing only yields to immaturity in the outside world. In the narration, Stella-Rondo easily regains the position of the family “favorite” through the lies she produces and the family’s seeming acceptance of these lies as pure truths. In fact, however, Mama constantly questions these lies. She reprimands Sister for suggesting that Shirley-T is Stella-Rondo’s biological daughter, but she herself wonders how Stella-Rondo could possibly prove that Shirley-T is adopted. Later, she links Shirley-T’s silence and strange behavior to Mr. Whitaker’s consumption of chemicals, suggesting that she knows that Mr. Whitaker is, in fact, Shirley-T’s biological father. The author uses this characterization of Mama in order to show, that rather than not understanding the difference between truth and lies, she prefers one version over another, therefore...
“Riding the Bus with My Sister” by Rachel Simon is a touching, true life journey about Beth and her sister Rachel. Beth and Rachel are in there thirties at the time the book takes place. They were born eleven months apart and aside of their age difference and their personality, Beth is different from Rachel because she suffers from mental retardation. Beth has lived on her own in her subsidized apartment and enjoys riding the bus routes around Pennsylvania city. Beth asked Rachel to come stay a year with her in order to accompany her in her daily bus route routine and Rachel agreed. “Riding the Bus with My Sister” documents Rachel’s remarkable journey her and her sister spent together and her learnings from Beth. Simon presents views on how those with mental retardation should be treated and self-determination.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley introduces the change from good to evil with the attention that guardians give a child. William Crisman, in his critique of Mary Shelley’s work, identifies the “sibling rivalry” between Victor and the rest of his family. Crisman remarks that Victor feels as if he is the most important person in his parents’ lives, since he was Alphonse’s and Caroline’s only child. The Frankensteins adopt Elizabeth and Victor sarcastically remarks that he has a happy childhood. This prompts Victor starts to read essays about alchemy and study natural science. Anne Mellor, another critic of Frankenstein, proposes that Frankenstein’s creature was born a good person and society’s reaction to him caused him to turn evil. Victor’s makes the creature in his own perception of beauty, and his perception of beauty was made during a time in his life when he had secluded himself from his family and friends. He perceived the monster as “Beautiful!”, but Victor unknowingly expressed the evil in himself, caused by secluding himself from everybody, onto the creature (60). In this way, the creature is Victor’s evil mirrored onto a body. The expression of Victor onto the monster makes the townspeople repulsed by the creature. The theory of the “alter ego” coincides with Crisman’s idea of sibling rivalry (Mellor). Mary Shelley conveys that through Crisman’s idea of sibling rivalry, Victor isolates himself from society. Mellor describes the isolation during his creation of his creature leads to him giving the creature false beauty that causes Victor to abandon him and society to reject him.
Eudora Welty is one of the leading American writers of the twentieth century. In her work “The Little Store,” Welty recollects from her memories of growing up. She humbly admitted that she lived a “sheltered life” growing up in the South as a woman. From this perspective, Eudora writes her short story as a means to tell her passage into adulthood.
Eudora Welty was born on April 13, 1909, Jackson, Mississippi. Her father's name is Christian Welty, and her mother's name was Chestina Welty. She has two brothers named Edward Welty and Walter Welty. Welty grew up in a house full of books. Her mother gave her the passion of reading and writing. Eudora went to Davis Elementary School. She attended and graduated from Jackson's Central High School. Eudora had graduated from the University of Wisconsin and studied business for a year at Columbia University. Eudora earned her Bachelors degree. She also attended Mississippi University for Women. Eudora was a short story writer, novelist, and photographer. Her major themes of her books extend beyond the south-loneliness, the pain of growing up, and the for people to understand themselves. Eudora Welty grew up during the Great Depression. She was able to travel around Mississippi taking pictures of people during the Great Deppression. " Endured series of misfortunes with stoicism and forbearance." (The New York Times, Prose, 2005). Eudora Welty faced several struggles in her life such as the lose of family and having a hard time finding a job.
Sister lives in China Grove, Mississippi presumably a very small town with only a few occupants. She lives with her mother, grandfather and uncle in their home, being the center of attention for the duration of the time until her younger sister, Stella-Rondo returns home. The return of Stella-Rondo sparks a conflict with Sister immediately because Sister is obviously envious of her and has been even before she came back to China Grove. The reader gets clear evidence of Sister’s jealousy toward Stella-Rondo when Sister says “She’s always had anything in the world she wanted and then she’d throw it away.”(594). Clearly Sister has a predisposition toward Stella-Rondo returning for many reasons, and this is the beginning of the conflict that she begins to have with herself.
In The Rez Sisters by Cree playwright Tomson Highway, the family road trip promotes each woman’s understanding of their relationships by creating an environment for personal growth and discovery. The road trip, with the help of Nanabush, helps reconnect the sisters and strengthen their bond so they are prepared for Marie-Adele's death. The inter-family conflicts show how the sisters encourage each other to be better people, survive the struggles of living on the rez, and support each other through hard times.
Just like Jesus, Phillip came to aid people but instead just got tossed aside and sent back to where he came from. Tom brought Phillip to aid the people of the farm, and he did, but to Tom's parents, his help was not sufficient, so Phillip was tossed aside and sent back to where he came from, just like Jesus had been. Tom's father can illustrate this for us when he says, "I'm taking him back to town…He tried hard enough…" (Ross 234). According to Tom's father he tried relativly hard enough, but it was just inadequate so we are taking him back. This is also not fair when it comes to Phillip. Phillip tried hard, but that was still not good enough. Just like Jesus who tries hard to get the people to be enlightened and to embrace God, but was instead punished for it. Thus showing how Phillip and Jesus Christ can, in a way be the same
Eudora Welty writes with feeling and her “Emphasis is on varying combinations of theme, character, and style.” (Kinc...
During the course of the story we see many references that Sister is envious, even jealous of Stella-Rondo. Sister thinks that because “Stella-Rondo is exactly twelve months to the day younger [than she is] that she’s spoiled.” (108) A person exactly one year younger than another sibling is no more or less spoiled than the other person. Sister says Stella-Rondo has “always had anything in the world [she]wanted.” This seems to bother Sister because she thought she never got everything she wanted. “Papa-Daddy give [Stella-Rondo] this gorgeous Add-a-pearl necklace”. There are some benefits that naturally go along with being the younger sibling. This does not mean that Sister has to behave the way she does. True, she never references Papa Daddy buying her anything or giving her “everything” she wanted, but she has to take into account what he has done for her. Papa Daddy got her the Post Office job “through [his] influence with the government”, which Sister thinks is the “next smallest P.O. in the entire state of Mississippi”.
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.
In the movie The Other Sister, two characters were portrayed as having mild intellectual disabilities. Between these two characters some accuracies of intellectual disabilities are portrayed, but also some of their characteristics appear to be inaccurate or inconsistent. For example, throughout the movie Danny and Carla both have limited vocabulary and their language is more immature. Also, Danny and Carla both display learned helplessness. Carla outwardly expresses learned helplessness to her mother. Even though Carla has huge dreams and ambitions she still feels like she will never be good enough or like everyone else. Carla says, “I can’t do better because I’m not better”. This line is deeply upsetting
It is about a son who abandons his family to “squander his wealth in wild living” (New International Version, Luke.15.13). After losing all his wealth he recognizes the importance of family and returns home. His father lovingly welcomes him because he will always love his son, regardless of the incident. God loves all His children; even the ones that abandon Him. All He asks of us is to repent from our sins and seek Him with all our hearts. This parable motivates believers to always repent because God is the most merciful and forgiving. Besides teaching about the good news, Jesus also performed miracles that caused many people to believe in his
My brothers and sister are the best motivation to me. It is not every day that we get along but when we do then it is a good day. Every day they make me want do better, not only for myself but for my mom and them also. They encourage me to do better now so that my future is bright later on. Family is always the best to have on your team especially for their support because they genuinely mean it and you know that it is coming from their heart. I know I can count on all my brothers and sister to be there for me when no one else is because they are family. I hate that they are growing every day and getting older to experience the real life. I hope even later on they will all still support me and we will not drift apart like I know