Green Curtain's Dialect and Dramatic Monologue Eudora Welty is not simply a brilliant writer, she is a brilliant and gifted storyteller. A product of the South's rich oral tradition, Welty considers the richness of local discourse one of the greatest gifts his heritage has to offer (Vande Kieft 9). Southern speech is characterized by speaking, listening, and remembering. Welty, a great listener, based many of her stories on snippets of dialogue she heard in her daily life. However, Welty makes the most of the Southern penchant for conversation. His stories are rich in dialect and often take the form of dramatic monologues, as in "Why I Live at the PO" and "The Petrified Man." Southern language is primarily narrative and often takes the form of tall tales, folk tales, and local legends. This is also true in Welty's writing, in which one finds not a simple conversation, but the telling of a story. Often with Welty the story is not told by the narrator, but rather by the characters (53). It is through this structure that the dramatic monologue appears. In Welty's "Why I Live at PO," the China Grove postmistress, called only "Sister," is systematically alienated from her family following a fight with her sister, Stella-Rondo, whom she accuses of stealing and ran away. with her boyfriend, Mr. Whitaker. As the two sisters compete for the family's support, one by one the family members side with Stella-Rondo and the sister lays out her case to the reader. "Stella-Rondo had done nothing but turn it on me from upstairs while I stood there helpless in front of the hot stove," Sorella rants. "So mom, dad-dad, and the baby were all on Stella-Rondo's side (Welty 102). Welty, a true master of language, never received any form of formal education in the field of writing. She was educated through his surroundings, through listening and remembering Welty's use of the Southern vernacular is an important element in every story he writes Welty without listening to it also the Southern speech written by Welty highly characteristic of the way the language is actually spoken. It is the qualities of the spoken word that manifest themselves in Welty's writing and give it its poetic richness of dialectical spelling and pronunciation, it is through rhythm, idioms and specified vocabulary that is able to bring the Southern language alive (Brooks 416).