Go Carolina

In his personal narrative, Sedaris uses humor, dialogue, diction, and figurative language such as hyperbole and colloquialisms to express the themes of Communication and Self-Expression, Feeling Like an Outsider, and Concealing One’s True Identity to Conform. In addition, he addresses his reaction to the school’s attempts to force him to change. Through this anecdote, Sedaris provides much insight on what it was like to be gay in the 1960s South. He has always felt like an outsider and learned early how to pass as a typical heterosexual male. Instead of focusing on a particular viewpoint about sexual orientation, Sedaris presents an honest glimpse into the complications of his life as a boy who felt an urgent need to hide his sexuality. Through metaphor and symbolism, he focuses on the themes of change and differences.

From the outset of the essay, Sedaris humorously sets himself apart from everyone, using the spy thriller trope to portray himself as a criminal taken away for interrogation. He’s the only kid who’s taken away from the classroom, and the tense diction sets the scene for David to be separate and different from his peers and, later, from much of society. Unlike most of the kids in his school, he has a speech disability, a sibilant lisp, and throughout the essay, he portrays himself as an outsider, an “other.” His teacher announcing his therapy appointments in front of the entire class further separated him from his classmates. Such behavior by a teacher, which demonstrates a lack of discretion and respect for personal privacy, is fortunately much less common today.

Sedaris explains that he enjoyed stereotypically feminine activities like baking and making potpourri, adding that he tried to get excused from elementary school physical education and sports activities. He did his best to act like other boys but couldn’t really relate to their typical conversations about sports and Boy Scouts. As the essay continues, Sedaris describes how he hyperbolically committed to silence due to the lisp because the condition made him feel even more alienated. Only dialogue with his family, in particular his mother (who chided him for being dramatic), brought David lightheartedly back to reality and provided him with perspective. With his family, he didn’t feel like an outsider, noting that they all seemed to have their own issues. Family support and acceptance is important for LGBTQ+ individuals because it demonstrates unconditional love.

Agent Samson was set on “helping” David learn to talk without a lisp, and because people often associate lisps with gay sexual orientation, he was being forced to change and question his identity. The only other kids in speech therapy were similarly “kittenish” boys who, like David, had a lisp, weren’t popular, and completely lacked interest in State versus Carolina basketball. They all had weekly sessions with Agent Samson to try to fix their lisps and, by proxy, their sexual orientation. Sedaris never blatantly states that Agent Samson was trying to force the boys to reject their sexual preference; however, Sedaris thinks the door to the speech therapy lab should have read “Future Homosexuals of America” (3). The text implies that it was common knowledge that gay students were attending the school, because as Agent Samson asked about who needed speech therapy, the teachers volunteered names. Although David never came out as gay, he did mention that when the boys were asked what occupation they wanted to pursue as an adult, they’d list occupations that would actually describe who they wanted to sleep with when they grew up, like “a policeman or a fireman or one of those guys who works with high-tension wires” (3). His sexuality was hidden, and the lisp symbolized who he was and the desire of others to change that.

David didn’t have a problem communicating with others until he met Agent Samson and was made consciously aware of the lisp. From then on, he changed his ingrained vocabulary to avoid using words with an “s” sound because he didn’t want to change his speech. While his vocabulary impressed adults, it spawned a new worry: He now needed to lay low to avoid being seen as the teacher’s pet. His complex relationship with communication kept growing as he avoided speaking and even began lying. What was never a problem became a major conflict for David that permeates the book Me Talk Pretty One Day.

Sedaris uses humor, especially self-deprecating humor, to relieve the tension of his plight; it keeps the tone light while he discusses potentially life-altering events. By framing the narrative as a crime TV/spy thriller, he uses wit to deescalate the tension and to highlight its absurdity, addressing the injustice he felt while being interrogated by Agent Samson. His response, to radically change his diction—for instance, “a river or two” to avoid the plural (4) or “the left-hand and the right-hand glove of Janet” to avoid the possessive (4)—displayed humor while outwitting the agent’s attempts to trick him into saying “s” words. Later, Samson preyed on David’s sympathies to dupe him. The last line of the essay is self-deprecating as his mother calls him a “sucker,” but Sedaris says he prefers “chump.” He doesn’t mind readers chuckling at him and the difficult yet absurd situation he was in.