Leviathan Ways To Have Fun At The Beach Analysis

“Leviathan: Ways to have Fun at the Beach” by David Sedaris is an anecdotal article depicting the author, Sedaris, who moves with his wife, two children and ninety-one year old father to the small beach town of Emerald Island after the death of this mother in order to build stronger bonds between his immediate family and his (somewhat) estranged father, by moving in next door to him, throwing away their TVs, and spending more time together. Across the notable differences between Emerald Island and their big city, and the changes in the father’s behavior, the author demonstrates how the social order surrounding strangers, civil inattention, and involved indifference leads to isolation between even family members by showing how the release from …show more content…
Equally, in less urbanized cities there is less tolerance for views or attitudes that differ from the vast majority of the population, and there is an expected homogenization of views, which can also contribute to the widespread familiarity in smaller towns: everyone gets along, and those who don’t often leave to bigger cities or become isolated. This idea certainly exists in “Leviathan”, in which the merging of ideologies between Sedaris and his father correspond with emotional improvements to their relationship as they spend more time together. For example, Sedaris’ father, while he was in the city, was a hard core republican who blared a “conservative cable station, filling his falling-down house with outrage”, until one day the entire family went out to lunch and a customer came in with a gun holstered to his belt, sitting at the table adjacent to the children, after which “we glared at him with what might as well have been as single eye”. This demonstrated how small town living, with its small social circles, forces people to be together with minimal barriers, in a way that encourages conversation and, in this case, allowed Sedaris and his father to find a political middle ground, a place where their views overlapped: gun control. This is essential to interrupting the “stranger” pattern of interaction between them, because, as Vann stated in “Tolerance for Alternative Lifestyles”, it is more difficult to identify with those whose information is unknown or opposes our own, as the void in information is often filled with negative stereotypes and increases the spiritual distance between cultural strangers. By sharing these small segements of political views, Sedaris and his father become less