Immaturity And A Lack Of Communication: Ripping The Family Apart In Why I Live At The P.O.

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Immaturity and a Lack of Communication: Ripping the Family Apart in Why I Live at the P.O. In Why I Live at the P.O. Eudora Welty demonstrates that immaturity and a lack of communication, tend to have a debilitating effect on family relationships. What we see throughout the course of this short story is that repeated failures in communication between member’s of Sister’s family ultimately lead to the sundering of one of the most deeply held and sacred concepts known to humans—blood relations. This notion of petty difficulties and problems, such as immaturity, is examined and emphasised in many ways. While I will consider Welty’s many representations of these petty problems, I will largely focus on the explicit immaturity, and the lack of communication within the family. Welty uses the relationships between members of the family to suggest that while it may be difficult to compromise, it is vital, or else the intimacy and closeness of the relationship will fade into nothingness. Immaturity, whether explicit, or interpreted by the reader, drives the plot of Why I Live at the P.O., and is integral to an understanding of Welty’s commentary on the family life of the South. Sister feels that everyone in her family is out to make her life miserable: “first thing Stella-Rondo did...was turn Papa-Daddy” (1036). This inability to deal with even simple problems shows the clear immaturity and dysfunctionality within this family, culminating in Sister’s departure from the household. Welty draws the reader’s attention to these immature responses, and in doing so, contrasts the relatively normal domestic life of millions of Americans to an almost universally opposite situation. This contrast creates a very interesting atmosphere for the reader, and furthers the understanding of the divide caused within a family by a lack

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