In the following essay, Peter Schmidt employs character analyses for detailed insight into Welty's story.

One way to think of the Rondo family in "Why I Live at the P.O." is as an exceptionally noisy family of paper cutouts. Certainly the characters are as delightfully two-dimensional, and as farcically posed, as the cutouts described in "Women!!" but the story is also a comedy about fashion, gender differences, and power.

"Why I Live at the P.O." is set in China Grove, Mississippi, and features Sister as the narrator, Stella-Rondo (her younger sister), Papa-Daddy (Sister's grandfather), Mama (Sister's mother), Uncle Rondo, Stella-Rondo's two-year-old daughter Shirley- T., and (briefly) a dying woman named Old Jep Patterson. In the beginning of Sister's monologue, most readers tend to share Sister's view of the absurdity of her family members. Sister's main tactic is to show how false their language is. Stella-...