Why I Live at the P.O.

As with every first-person narration, you have to be on guard about the narrator's reliability. What is Sister's motivation for telling her story? How would you characterize her narrative style? What evidence can you come up with that Sister is, and/o

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In this story, the narration is so preoccupied with "taking sides,"that the issue of point of view is paramount. Stella-Rondo and Sister have completely different versions of the truth. Sister, as the narrator, has every opportunity to persuade her listeners, but Welty leads us to question the accuracy of her story. Sister's perspective dominates the story, but there are places in which her version of events seem completely implausible. Sister's reasons for her break-up with Mr. Whitaker make no sense, and at other times, her tendency to exaggerate leave us shaking our heads. Despite her claims to being a champion of truth, she is unreliable, seeking to persuade us that she is in the right..... sadly, she doesn't succeed and creates the opposite impression.

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Why I Live at the P.O.