Why I Live at the P.O.

What is the author's style in Why I Live at the P.O. by Eudora Welty?

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In a story that is so deeply preoccupied with "taking sides," the issue of point of view is paramount. Stella-Rondo and Sister's different versions of the truth and the responses that each version elicits from the family generate the plot of "Why I Live at the P.O." Though Sister narrates the story in the first person, and thus has every opportunity to make a persuasive case for herself, Welty leads readers to question her accuracy. Welty lets Sister's voice and her perspective dominate the story, giving her plenty of rope with which to hang herself. In places, Sister's version of events simply seems implausible, as in her explanation of why she and Mr. Whitaker broke up. In others, her sense of victimization is so out of proportion as to seem comic, as when she complains of the terrible plight of having to "stretch two chickens over five people" instead of four. Despite her claims of championing the truth, Sister is rendered an unreliable narrator. She seeks to convince her audience that she is unambiguously in the right in her dispute with her family and that she has made a successful break from them by moving to the post office, but her account creates the opposite impression.

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