Baylor College Medical School

240 b. Sweet Potato Pie by Eugenia Collier

240 b. How does Charley look, thinks, says, or does, how do others respond to him, and what does the narrator says about Charley?

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Charley became a father figure to his siblings. Their real father was always toiling in the fields. Charley had to grow up fast and take care of his siblings.He was strict and often told Buddy how he would be somebody, he would represent the families dreams.

"Charley was taller than anybody in the world, including, I was certain, God....As I grew older, Charley became more father than brother. Those days return in fragments of splintered memory: Charley’s slender dark hands whittling a toy from a chunk of wood, his face thin and intense, brown as the loaves Lil baked when there was flour. Charley’s quick fingers guiding a stick of charred kindling over a bit of scrap paper, making a wondrous picture take shape—Jamie’s face or Alberta’s rag doll or the spare figure of our bony brown dog. Charley’s voice low and terrible in the dark, telling ghost stories so delightfully dreadful that later in the night the moan of the wind through the chinks in the wall sent us scurrying to the security of Charley’s pallet, Charley’s sleeping form."