The Youth In Asia Summary

The idea of death is a concept that most people aren’t willing to talk or think about. When a person dies, most people are too sensitive to fret over it. Pets can also affect humans in the same way, as the death of a pet can be a tragic experience. However, some people may argue that seeing the suffering of pets can be more devastating than death. When an animal suffers, many owners turn to euthanasia to end their suffering. Throughout David Sedaris’ satirical piece, The Youth in Asia, he explores a testament to the ability of moving on and adjusting after a death by combining a lighthearted tone and dark humor through the use of repetition of personal anecdotes and puns.
All across his paper, Sedaris references a multitude of personal anecdotes to demonstrate how his family dealt with the loss of pets. This can be seen with their first pet, “A short time after Duchess died, our father came home with a German shepard puppy...for reasons that were never explained.” Another dog was brought into the family as a way of coping with the death of the previous dog, Duchess. Even though Duchess died due to natural causes, the family’s adjusts their lives by ‘replacing’ it. …show more content…
When the family lost the mother, Sedaris began to question the future of her position, “acting on instinct, our father might run out and immediately replace her.” Although the main method of dealing with death was replacing the pets, the author begins to question the fate of his mother’s place. He does this because even though losing a pet can be upsetting, losing a mother can be catastrophic to a person’s life. Even though death may be a tragic experience, he provides an uplifting tone to this part of the essay through the use of dark humor. He does this by comparing his mom to the pets and questioning the fate of her position. As a result, the mood of the piece is lifted as mild humor is brought into a rather serious