Sucker Brother Pete Character Analysis

I believe that Sucker has been created out of a psychological need, and there is some evidence to prove this. Sucker doesn’t seem to get noticed by anyone in his family except for Pete, Pete forgets about him occasionally, and the way Maybelle treated Pete was projected on the way Pete treated Sucker.

Despite Sucker living with Pete and his family for quite a few years, he does not seem to have many connections to his family besides Pete. Sucker has been with them since he was a baby, and while it is normal for siblings to share a room, I do not know many siblings that share a bed. One would think that if Sucker has been with them for as long as Pete claims, he would have his own bed. Pete also mentions that he and his kid sisters say he was

That itself is obvious; even Pete admits it when he says, “when Sucker was a little kid and on up until the time he was twelve I guess I treated him as bad as Maybelle did me”(McCullers 32). When Maybelle starts actually noticing him, Pete starts feeling bad for how he treated Sucker and wanted to make it up to him, so they become good friends, but then it starts to go downhill. Maybelle for some reason started acting differently around Pete and he started getting worried, and then everything Sucker did kept annoying him. Just like any other human being, Pete could keep his anger under control and took it out on something, and that thing was Sucker. Here is where things get weird. Pete says that he remembers Sucker growing a little bit bigger every year, but still staying the same. However, when Pete yells at him, he changed a lot, especially physically. According to Pete, he grows more than any other boy he’s met. He went from being a timid twelve-year-old who idolizes his older ‘brother’ to being as big as Pete and even more cold-hearted than Pete was before. To conclude, I believe that Sucker is completely made up because practically no one else in his family except Pete acknowledges him, Pete will occasionally forget he’s there, and Pete practically mirrored how Maybelle was treating him on Sucker, more so than it