About everybody in the world has seen a difficult time in their lives at a young age. Those who managed to get through their childhood without encountering any temptations or difficulties are right to think of themselves as fortunate. David Sedaris, the author of the short story Go Carolina, was no exception to this practice. Because of his lisp, he had one of the most frustrating periods in kindergarten. This reminds me of the segregation and prejudice that most children face at school as a result of their disabilities. It is an accurate reflection and reminder of what it is like to be pulled away with a special program. Sedaris narrates his personal reflection and experience he had with a therapist at his elementary school. From the story it seems that the entire ordeal was traumatizing on the young soul. Go Carolina tells the story of adoption of changes but if an individual decides to make any changes in life he or she is not supposed to do so merely because they want to please others. The transformation in life cannot be avoided but all changes have to be done for the good of ourselves. Sedaris in the story manages to let people know that everyone is different and they are supposed to accept their true self who they really are.
David Sedaris is an author, humorist, writer, and radio contributor. On December 26, 1956, he was born in Johnson City, New York and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Some of his contribution to the literature world includes Barrel fever, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Naked, and Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls amongst many more (David Sedaris).
The story is a personal experience by the author while still in school. Sedaris explains an ordeal with the speech therapist in grammar school together with the pull-out sessions to deal with the lisps problem while trying to overcome it. At the beginning the author presents the story with a crime scene analogy. In this case the therapist is an agent while Sedaris is the criminal (Ferrell, Monique, and Julian Williams 280). The suspect discovers that he has lisps upon interrogation by the therapist on the way he was pronouncing the word “State” (Ferrell, Monique, and Julian Williams 281). The tittle of the story is a relation to the therapist interest in sports and the way she disturbed him with questions concerning his favorable sports team. It was during this session that Sedaris noticed that he did not do or like things most of the boys would have which is an indirect indication that he was gay.
Sedaris explains how the experience was stressful to him and gives an overview of how it feels to be one of the children singled out because of your condition just to be given special instructions. The authors go to the extent of adjusting his speech just to avoid his impairment. The first step he is forced to start speaking less while walking around with a thesaurus, which would help him, avoid the world with “s”. For instance, he, Sedaris would convert all words beginning with the letter “S” to start with the letters “TH” in order to studiously do away with the letter “s”. He managed to avoid the therapist using this manner. A smart kid indeed and an excellent way of making it even. The therapist had no otherwise but to go onto another job feeling a profound sense of achievement in failure at Sedaris School (Ferrell, Monique, and Julian Williams 285). Ms. Samson told Sedaris a story on the last therapy of the year. She told the sad story with an intention of gaining remorse from him, which she was successful. The story ends with her last session with the author. In addition, besides the lisp being a physical trait is has been used as a metaphor to represent how the author is different from other kids in the community. The author purposively skews the focus of the reader in order to provide a deep sense of comprehension on the plight of Sedaris rather than encouraging judgmental perceptions.
In the story “Go Carolina” Sedaris uses a sarcastic tone to convey his message. He thinks that those who were around him or were with him in class would grow up to be prominent people such as lawyers or movie stars because they could talk and contribute in class (Ferrell, Monique, and Julian Williams 283). Sedaris on the other hand he was forced to take a vow of silent due to his lisps condition and for these reasons the only reasonable career was to become a monk. More so the entire story can be considered to an overall use of flashback as a literary skill.
The author takes us back into his childhood the mid1960s when he was still in fifth grade. Similar Sedaris employs the use of hyperbole in the story to make it interesting. When he was absent David could put his imagination into play and visualize what the therapist was saying to the class. He could imagine that the teacher would single him out after the classes just to offer him the therapy session. We can clearly see that Sedaris is having an internal conflict. He wonders why anything worth doing for him turned out to be a girl thing. Due to this he imagined that the marker at the therapist was written with the thoughts of a speech therapy lab but for him it would be appropriate if it read “future homosexuals of America.”
The story does illuminate some elements of the public-school system. I found it to be humorous, funny but at the same time depressing and serious. It supplements the thesis statement in that it puts an emphasis on the fact that people should not impose on themselves judgmental remarks from others. Even though it was my first time reading anything from Sedaris it was fun as well as enjoyable. The length too is short and precisely right. The work Go Carolina is fully connected to the American contemporary literature. It is evident that any modern writer always tries or rather comment, criticize and take them apart. From the text we see that Sedaris is fearlessly using the past to criticize himself in an intensely personal context. Furthermore, his work is structured in a non-classical format (Ruland, Richard, and Malcolm Bradbury 335).
In conclusion, it is evident that every person was born in a unique and they grow up being different in one way or the other. However, the survival in the world will depend on how the uniqueness of a person will be perceived by various people in diverse ways. The story Go Carolina by Sedaris cannot be seen as an adage about the author being gay but the fact is that it is a literature about being different. Furthermore, we have seen the pressure the society puts on a person because they are different and tries to forces them to blend in with the social norms.
Work Cited
David Sedaris. Sedaris biography. Retrieved on November 25, 2017 from https://www.biography.com/people/david-sedaris-39460
Ferrell, Monique, and Julian Williams. "Go Carolina" Lead, Follow or Move Out of the Way: Global Perspectives in Literature. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 2015. Pg 280-285
Ruland, Richard, and Malcolm Bradbury. From puritanism to postmodernism: a history of American literature. Routledge, 2016. Pg 1-413
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