Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Me Talk Pretty One Day, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Insecurity
Humor, Commentary, and Observation
Class and Belonging
Family, Love, and Support
Summary
Analysis
Hugh spent a large portion of his childhood in various African countries, something that makes Sedaris deeply jealous. In particular, Sedaris is envious that Hugh got to do things like go on a fifth-grade fieldtrip to an Ethiopian slaughterhouse, where the children watched as a man shot a piglet in the head. By contrast, Sedaris’s class only ever visited places like Colonial Williamsburg, which he found unbearably boring. While living in Ethiopia, Hugh went to a movie about a talking car, and when he exited the theater, he saw a dead man hanging from a nearby telephone pole. When he later told his friends about this, they said, “You saw the movie about the talking car?”
It almost goes without saying that Sedaris and Hugh had drastically different childhoods. What’s most noteworthy about the way Sedaris thinks about Hugh’s upbringing, though, isn’t that he’s jealous that Hugh got to go on adventures and experience foreign cultures—rather, he’s jealous that Hugh has intense, gruesome stories to tell. This traces back to Sedaris’s desire to be seen as interesting and mysterious, as if seeing a dead man hanging outside a movie theater would give him a certain amount of social currency. In reality, the experiences he wishes he had are most likely traumatic, but Sedaris doesn’t stop to think about this because he’s focused on what kind of person he might be if he had his own intriguing stories to tell.
Themes
Thinking back on his upbringing, Hugh often has to remember where in the world he was living during a given period. Because his life seems so interesting, Sedaris wishes he could claim it for his own. In fact, he often does claim Hugh’s life as his own, remembering the time that his class visited a slaughterhouse or the time he saw a dead man swinging from a telephone pole. Whenever his own memories fail to interest him, he simply plumbs Hugh’s, taking whatever seems most interesting from his lover’s past.
Again, Sedaris wishes he had a more interesting childhood. Without bothering to consider the fact that some of Hugh’s most interesting stories most likely came along with some kind of trauma, he decides to claim them for his own, thinking first and foremost about what it would be like to have such fascinating stories. In turn, he once more reveals his desire to make up for something in his own life.
Themes
