Sibling Love
Aubrey Cameron
“If a person admires you a lot you despise him and don't care…(McCullers, Pg. 1)” This quote from Carson McCullers short
story, “Sucker”, can describe the relationship between siblings. The more a
younger sibling wants to be apart of the older ones activities, the more the
older one rejects them. Throughout this short story Pete struggles with his
relationship with Richard, or sucker his cousin, and how he is treating him.
Richard is about four years younger and finds everything Pete does pretty cool
so he goes along with whatever Pete tells him to do.
As an
older sister I can relate to Pete and how he felt about having a younger
sibling he didn’t always want around. I am about five years older than my
sister, Amber. Whenever I had friends over, when we were younger, I never
wanted my sister to be around. Since we shared a room it was hard to just make
her leave because she would become stubborn and claim I had no right to make
her leave. It would have made it much easier if I could have just given her a
look the way Pete looked at Richard every time he wanted Richard to leave. When
my sister wouldn’t leave I would say some pretty mean things to make her mad so
she wouldn’t want to hang out with us. I soon learned that I had to say
something to make her leave but not bad enough to make her cry and turn to my
dad who would then force us to let her stay. Looking back I feel terrible about
some of the things I said or did to make her cry. Amber has always been very
sensitive, more so than I am, so even when I’m not trying to upset her, she
ends up hurt or takes what I say too personally. Although I knew she was mad at
me I also knew we would work things out and by the next day we would be getting
along again. Now that we are older we get along much better although every now
and then we start back up again, but the reasons we fight are changing as we
grow older. Just like Pete I look back and wonder how do I make it up to Amber for
everything I’ve said or done, but he truth is I can’t change the past I can
only build a better relationship with her now and learn from the past.
I think
part of the differences between the way Pete handled his situation and the way
I did has to do with the fact that Richard is not his biological brother.
Although Richard had been apart of the family since he was a baby, they both
understand that they aren’t really brothers and they let that et in the way of
their relationship. Pete also doesn’t see Richard forgiving him. Many days go
by and Pete still feels Richard’s anger, whereas my sister and I would go to
bed and start a new day without worrying what happened the day before.
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