David Sedaris - Us and Them Response

First, I thought that the story was very interesting, to say the least. One of the first actions the main character does is, at night, creep into the Tomkey’s yard at night and hide in their bushes to get a better view of what they were doing inside the house. The very action of sneaking into the neighbor’s yard paints the character as one that has some small boundaries, in terms of privacy, and gives him a daring and exotic personality. Then, later we are presented with his situation on the day after Halloween. His mother asks him to give up his candy, and the first reaction we are given is shock followed by disgust. He proceeds to eat the candy himself, drawing his character image as one of gluttony. The combination of creeping into the Tomkey’s yard and eating candy that his mother had designated for their children doesn’t paint his character in the best of light. While a major part of the story is the main characters development, the memoir is built around getting any information about the Tomkeys the family can get their hands on and describing the behaviors and abnormalities of their family.

Secondly, I believe the writing style of having a different story and period of time accompanied with, nearly, each new paragraph to provide each one with refreshing new details about his neighbors. To continue, the writer would have benefited from using more imagery throughout their entire writing, similar to that which was presented in the last paragraphs of the short story, to give us a better picture and description of the family. Ultimately, Sedaris used the Tomkeys not having a television as a catapult for a bombardment of abnormalities within the family that tore down any wall of normality the reader associated with them.

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