Me Talk Pretty One Day

Question #1:
Sedaris turned a potentially boring experience- auditing a beginner’s language class- into a humorous essay by being sarcastic about his downfall and adding “footnotes” onto the different situations he met. He was being honest about his feelings and he does not care putting himself on the same level of the readers – this made his essay sympathetic. Adding “footnotes” is really a good strategy to be funny. Every time he describe a normal or even boring thing, his mind can always capture something else which made his argument vivid or even hilarious. The readers are pleased by his mind-made footnotes and that’s where his sense of humor came from.

The funniest part of the essay “And it struck me that, for the first time since arriving in France, I could understand every word that someone was saying.” (227)

“Deadpan” humor is showing humor in an indifferent tone. An example would be “The teacher continued her diatribe and I settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each new curse and insult.” (277) From here we can feel the indifferent attitude the author wanted to show to us. When sarcasm is intertwined with indifference, the humor that came out of it is even more powerful.

Question #2:
Sedaris reveals himself indirectly by explaining the situation but not identifying himself. For example, when he wants to tell us that he didn’t understand what the woman was talking about, he said, “If you have not meimslsxp or lgpdmurct by this time, them you should not be in this room.” (274) The author didn’t try to explain to you how he couldn’t understand French, he just gave u a side-look of what he saw and what he heard and let the readers to figure out by themselves.