Homework Clinic
Social Science Clinic => English => Topic started by: Bernana on Jul 20, 2018
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Describe Sisters personality. Is she slightly crazy or is her odd behavior ajustified revolt against her family?
What will be an ideal response?
Question 2
Sister uses the word nigger several times in the story, and she is clearlya racist. What does her attitude toward African Americans tell you about the time and place of the story?
What will be an ideal response?
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Answer to Question 1
- Sister is at once paranoid and intensely jealous of her sister, Stella-Rondo, who she tells us is exactly twelve months to the day younger than I am and for that reason . . . spoiled. The meticulously skewed logic apparent in this statement suggests the odd nature of the story that follows, Sisters tall tale explaining why she lives at the post office, or, as she notably phrases it, the P.O., for, in Weltys narrative, voicedialect, clichs, non-sequitursand plot are virtually indistinguishable. Sisters way of relating dialogue differs from how it is reported by and to other family members. The repetition of this disparity of points of view intensifies the storys humor through the sheer accumulation of detail, with its attendant grotesque exaggeration of Sisters condition. It also subliminally registers the darker implications of Sisters isolation.
Answer to Question 2
- The epithet is used not in the heat of anger or with the intention of wounding or provoking, but rather as a casual descriptive which for this speaker is the customary term of reference for African Americans, just one detail in a culture of pervasive, instinctive, and unexamined racism. Though its use in this way is hardly confined to the American South in the pre-Civil Rights era, it does strongly suggest that that place and time are the setting of the story, as is indeed the case.