David Sedaris, in his essay Remembering my Childhood on the Continent of Africa, uses clever parallelism, thinly veiled satire, disconnected idealism, and intermittent dialogue to supplement an allegorical analysis of Security and Liberty in Human Society. Sedaris is a well-known comedic author, and his essays tend to be about one subject at face value, but an entirely different one between the lines. This clever distinction allows the reader to enjoy two stories at a time. Given this, Remembering is, at face value, the story of the contrasting lives of Sedaris, and his male “partner” Hugh. At this level, the essay itself is simplistic, sarcastic, and whimsical. The deeper level, however, conveys an analysis of a deeper intellectual debate:
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A family works as a structural set because each individual has something to gain from the interoperability of that microcosmic social group. However, as more and more variables (i.e. Humans) come into the scheme, the societal string begins to unravel because complexity as a whole, by its very nature, gets exponentially more complicated in a situation with multiple objects operating in and around each other. David Sedaris is referencing this entire concept when he talks about how Hugh was “so lucky” to be able to go and see, among other places, a slaughterhouse, an assassinated dictators curtains, and a man feeding hyenas from his mouth, as opposed to Sedaris’s trip to Colonial Williamsburg. Obviously Hugh was not lucky, this is all disturbing and not for children. This is all because, as a society, America establishes and stands by a social structure that protects its civilians from the horrors described and implied by the description of the field trips. So, Sedaris is not only using parallelism and dialogue to make a satirical argument about Hugh having a traumatizing time as a child, but he is also talking about the greatness of America’s liberties and protections as opposed to the breakdown of the average African nation’s social structure. This idea is furthered by the use of the “dictator’s curtains” which serves no purpose other than to bring out the idea of liberty versus
A family works as a structural set because each individual has something to gain from the interoperability of that microcosmic social group. However, as more and more variables (i.e. Humans) come into the scheme, the societal string begins to unravel because complexity as a whole, by its very nature, gets exponentially more complicated in a situation with multiple objects operating in and around each other. David Sedaris is referencing this entire concept when he talks about how Hugh was “so lucky” to be able to go and see, among other places, a slaughterhouse, an assassinated dictators curtains, and a man feeding hyenas from his mouth, as opposed to Sedaris’s trip to Colonial Williamsburg. Obviously Hugh was not lucky, this is all disturbing and not for children. This is all because, as a society, America establishes and stands by a social structure that protects its civilians from the horrors described and implied by the description of the field trips. So, Sedaris is not only using parallelism and dialogue to make a satirical argument about Hugh having a traumatizing time as a child, but he is also talking about the greatness of America’s liberties and protections as opposed to the breakdown of the average African nation’s social structure. This idea is furthered by the use of the “dictator’s curtains” which serves no purpose other than to bring out the idea of liberty versus