Character Analysis
As readers, we'll never get to form our own opinions about Bailey. There are plenty of poems and flashbacks about her that give us a sense of her personality, but they're all memories—and they're all written by Bailey's adoring little sister, Lennie. Lennie paints Bailey as someone who really carped that diem, who did things like ate petals off flowers and ran in the rain. Oh, and boys followed her around (7.57). Our perspective on Bailey is so one-sided that it's almost jarring when Uncle Big talks about her:
"Bailey?" his brow creases. "Nah, I don't see it. In fact, I've never seen a girl so relieved as when she got rejected from that school in New York City." (26.21)
A girl who is relieved to be rejected from school sounds like a real person, someone with confusion and doubt—not the perfectly adventurous older sister Lennie depicts in her poetry. We're not saying Lennie's characterization of Bailey is a complete lie or anything, just that Bailey is not quite the starlike dream-chasing sister of Bailey's imagination. Instead, Bailey was simply a person, complete with hopes, dreams, flaws, secrets, and all that totally human jazz.
Of course, we'll never know the truth of Bailey because we'll never meet her. Whoever she is, though, Bailey eventually serves as an inspiration for Lennie. When Lennie wears a seductive dress to band practice, she tries to walk the way Bailey would. And by the end of the book, doesn't Lennie seem like someone who would run into the rain? We think so, and we think Bailey would be proud.