David Sedaris 'Guest Room Gambits'

Hundreds of people are gathered around dancing, drinking, and having a good time. People are causally talking and laughing. Men and women from all around are having the “time of their life.” However, the lifestyle of the city, money, and connections don’t always create fulfilled, happy lives. For Daisy Buchanan, Nick Carraway, and Jay Gatsby, they are never alone but always isolated.

The home as a place of comfort does not exist for the narrator; companionship with her husband is lost. Her only real conversations occur on paper, as no one else speaks to her of anything other than her condition. She is stripped of her role as a wife, robbed of her role as a mother, and is reduced to an object of her husband's.

The book is written from the author’s perspective. The author uses words such as I, you, he, and she. Pinning down the exact point of

David Sedaris is a one of the best-selling authors. One of his books is called "Naked." In this book he talks about his life. David Sedaris is a great writer who wrote about his family and himself when he was growing up. While most people usually don't like talking about the humiliating moments of their lives, he presents the reader with his own obsessions and the numerous interesting and funny events from the life of his family. Sedaris uses a lot of sarcasm in his book; therefore it is very appealing and interesting to read. Sedaris was able to see the irony in any situation. I think this quality is very important in dealing with different issues in our lives.

The story is written as a second person narrative. This style puts the reader in the position of the main character. We are never told the main character’s name, making it easier for the reader to relate to the character. Writing in the second person also challenges the reader, putting them in the position of the main character.

The subject of Sedaris’s comparison and contrast in this essay is to show the aspects of both Hugh and the author’s childhood, that would cause the author to feel proud using his friend’s stories as his own. For instance, the author states that, “When I was young I went to the theater at the nearby shopping center and watched a movie about a talking Volkswagen… Like me, Hugh saw the movie by himself on a weekend afternoon. Unlike me, he left the theater two hours later, to find a dead man hanging from a telephone pole at the far end of the unpaved parking lot” (Sedaris 182). The quote above indicates that the author is being naïve and childish. No boy or child who is as young as he was should feel pleasure in seeing a dead person.

The essay goes into great detail of his relationship with his father. He describes his father as cruel (65), bitter (65), and beautiful (64). He does mention the bad in length. On the flip side, he tells us some of the good as well. Throughout his storytelling, the reader gets a glimpse into his life and the way he feels. His feelings evolve during the extent of the essay.

David Sedaris ' purpose in writing this essay is to force his audience to in turn look at and analyze themselves just as he did in his own narrative, and recognize

While the narrator recognizes the great care with which her husband is treating her she seems to constantly feel that she is being ungrateful. She calls herself out in her journal for being a “comparative burden” (Gilman) The room in which the narrator resides has a sturdy bed that is nailed to the floor. The narrator notes that there are bars on the windows and rings hooked into the wall. She wrongly assumes that this room was used as a nursery or gymnasium by the previous owners. As the reader, we are able to instill our own thoughts that this room was in fact built to house someone with a mental disorder. This begs the question of what the house really is, to contain such a room away from decent society.

As the poem progresses, the narrator continues to use certain terms that overall portray what he went through.

The young waiter has a harsh view of him as well because on occasion the old man has been so drunk he walks out on his bill. The younger waiter has a different respect for time, it’s precious to him and he values it. “I wish he would go home. I never get to bed before three o’clock. What kind of hour is that to go to bed?” “He stays up because he likes it.” “He’s lonely, I’m not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me.” “He had a wife once too” (153). The older you get, the more time wears down on you, and you begin to now, greater than ever, feel your mortality. This theme is used to help the reader understand the older mans pain and that no matter how young and confident someone is, they will eventually grow old and die.

Having each story been written in a third-person narrative form, the reader knows the innermost feelings of the

I have a wife waiting in bed for me” (Hemmingway). The Old man is out drinking because he has no wife and has nothing in his life. Later we see the reflective human condition in that the Older Waiter goes out drinking for himself, he relfects because he has nothing too. I agree with Bennett that the younger waiter is in a hurry, he actually has something, but unlike the two older men they prefer to stay out drinking to be away from the darkness of their homes. I think that the importance of this getting old people seem to lose their function.

Inside of Gatsby’s magnificent parties on West Egg, everything is bright, vibrant, cheerful, and so very, very alive. They reflect the glam and glitz that was so much a part of the culture in the early 20’s, and the tantalizingly thrilling atmosphere that the party scenes radiate draws the reader into Gatsby’s world. The parties even hold an air of intimacy, as Jordan and Nick slip off together in search of Gatsby and find themselves alone in his gargantuan library with one very drunk, slightly confused man who doesn’t quite seem to know what he’s doing. For a moment the glitter fades away and it’s just them. Soon, though, this same party atmosphere becomes one that is stifling, a facade for the grime lying beneath. The once-happily-partying narrator realizes just how lonely Gatsby is, and the parties become apparent as a way to compensate for it. Gatsby himself never enjoys himself, cannot truly have fun until he and Daisy are reunited. However, when Daisy finally does arrive to one of his parties, her husband insists upon coming along and barely leaves Gatsby and her a moment to themselves. Due to

Since we are walked through the grandfathers, experiences it feels like the reader is walking right alongside him. This ties in with the aging experience because we can listen or read about a person’s life but it never feels real to us. We can understand that someone lived a long and diverse life but we find no meaning or value in it. Western society views aging negatively because we do not want to grow old and die; people want to stay young and modern. In Figure 1, we see the ending of the book where the narrator contradicts this fact because he has similar experiences to his grandfather. This is important because we are seeing the story from the grandson’s perspective and at this point, the reader realizes that he was not interested in his grandfather’s life because it was not his own. When he finally experienced the same experiences, it was easier for him to relate to his grandfather and appreciate his