"Daddy Said"

When Miss Myra Angelique Pettigrew commits suicide by falling off of the water tower, Daddy and Louis go to the scene of the crime to find out the whole story. Mr. Small who witnessed the entire thing tells Daddy, Louis, and Mr. Newberry what really happened. When other people start telling the story, Daddy sticks to Mr. Small’s version because he was actually an eye witness. Louis says, “However, no matter how lively and colorful the various accounts we sampled, Daddy and Mr. Newberry stuck by Mr. Small’s version. The others did not differ considerably from the original except in authority, but Daddy said that makes a world of a difference in this sort of thing.” (pg 57) What is odd to me is that Louis Benfield tells the story of his town and the people in it, mostly from what his dad tells him. Throughout the book, Louis says, “Daddy said” when he is telling a story. Most of the things that Louis tells in his stories are things and events that he wasn’t around for to witness first hand. Daddy says that it matters which story you stick to because the original story from the person who witnessed the event is the only person with authority over the story. Shouldn’t that mean that I should be skeptical of the book and all of the stories because they are not told by the actual witness of these events? It probably doesn’t differ much from the original story like it says in the quote but Daddy does say that the person you hear it from makes a big difference. I think T.R. Pearson makes Louis tell the stories that his dad told him to make us wonder if this is the real story and if we should trust it. It is frustrating now that I have thought about this matter and it really makes me wonder what Pearson was trying to convey about this book with this particular quote.