Anything that smacked to him of affectation or being "stuck up" was subject to the harshest reprisals from him, and I, being the oldest, and the one who remembered my parents and the old best life, was the chief sinner, sometimes on purpose, sometimes unintentionally. (62)
In McCarthy's Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, the author often talks about how
she and her brothers are punished and mistreated, how their childhood was an unfair and
abusive one. They were beaten savagely with a razor strop and hairbrush. Sometimes
they deserved it but most of the times they didn't. The reason Uncle Myers often beat the
children was to discipline them and to keep them under control because he felt threatened
by them. He especially felt threatened by the author's intellectual abilities and ways. The
author being the oldest and the smartest of all the children, somehow Uncle Myers might
have felt insecure and challenged by her capabilities.
Uncle Myers had no history, "He not only did nothing for a living but he appeared
to have no history" (59). He didn't have any job or an occupation. He sat around at home
all day and did basically nothing. He lived off the money that the author's grandparents
gave them. The only reason he married the author's aunt was for the money and for the
power: "That he had married her for the money occurred to us inevitably, though it may
not have been so; very likely it was his power over her that he loved, and the power he
had to make her punish us" (59). Myers was fat, this can be assumed because he often
checked his weight: "He was always weighing himself on penny weighing machines"
(60). He also wasn't very bright. The story doesn't say if he knows how to read or not but
it does say that "Myers did not read" (62). He also hated long words, this shows his low
...