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
Sedaris has never idolized France like some people do. The only reason he now lives in Normandy is because of his relationship with Hugh, whom he meets through a mutual friend. He needs to borrow a ladder, so his friend refers him to Hugh, who happens to have a ladder. When Sedaris fetches it, he’s impressed by Hugh’s apartment in an old chocolate factory. Coming inside, Sedaris smells apple pie and realizes Hugh has stayed home on a Saturday night to bake and listen to country music. Sedaris is picky when it comes to finding long-term lovers, always capable of identifying something about a person that annoys him. However, when he learns that Hugh has a house in Normandy, he pictures himself living a foreign, exciting life in France. Living abroad would be a challenge, and he likes the idea of overcoming this challenge, so he decides to pursue Hugh.
Instead of focusing on Hugh himself, Sedaris thinks about all the ways his own life could improve if he had what Hugh has. This, it seems, is how he approaches their relationship, seeing it as a convenient arrangement that will enable him to lead a better life. Of course, there are most likely other reasons that Sedaris decides to pursue Hugh, but they exist outside the scope of this essay and, for that matter, outside the scope of Me Talk Pretty One Day as a whole. In keeping with his previously established desire to lead a wealthy, rewarding life, he gravitates toward Hugh because doing so will allow him to live a refined, international life between France and the United States.
Themes
Nine months later, Hugh moves in with Sedaris. Together, they plan to spend the month of August in Normandy, but Sedaris backs out at the last minute, realizing he’s afraid of going to France. Everyone in France, he thinks, is cultured and refined. Worse, they will never accept or like a person like Sedaris. Plus, Sedaris is convinced that French people dislike Americans, and this idea disconcerts him because he—like all Americans—has been raised to believe that the United States is the best country in the world. However, he overcomes his fears after he sees the fantastic things that Hugh is able to buy for him in France. According to Sedaris, Hugh isn’t very good at shopping, so the fact that he’s able to buy such interesting gifts indicates that it’s quite easy to find intriguing items—like taxidermy kittens—in France.
In alignment with Sedaris’s strange tastes, he is deeply impressed by the fact that a person can easily buy things like taxidermy kittens in France. By suggesting that this is the primary reason he decides to go with Hugh the next time he goes to France, Sedaris characteristically frames a big life decision in a humorous, off-handed way. Despite this humor, though, it’s worth noting that he originally stays behind in the United States because he doesn’t feel cultured or elegant enough to travel to France—yet another sign of the ways in which his close attention to class differences impacts his daily life.
Themes
The next summer, Sedaris accompanies Hugh to France, looking forward to the shopping and the ability to smoke in restaurants. The only French word he knows is “bottleneck,” but this doesn’t discourage him from making conversation. Whenever he sees somebody, he says, “Bottleneck.” Contrary to what he thought about how the French might treat Americans, everyone in Normandy is pleasant and ultimately thrilled that Sedaris has come all the way from the United States just to vacation in Normandy. In fact, everyone loves that Sedaris is from New York City, which Sedaris thinks most French people see as the best place in the United States. Everyone around him seems to think that he has had intimate run-ins with major celebrities, and when he indulges this idea by offhandedly mentioning the famous people he has seen, a group of teenagers starts hanging out in front of his and Hugh’s house.
Sedaris’s stories about his time in France allow him to interrogate the idea of national identity. As he tries to integrate himself into French culture, he gains a new perspective on his own background, seeing New York City through new eyes. However, he has yet to actually attempt to fit into life in Normandy, as evidenced by the fact that the only word he knows is “bottleneck.” Until he makes a true effort to learn the language, it seems, he will remain something of an outsider in France, even if his neighbors are eager to make his acquaintance.
Themes
Sedaris tries to improve his French vocabulary, learning new nouns like “ashtray,” “hammer,” and “screwdriver.” Still, this doesn’t enable him to converse with his neighbors, and he starts feeling like an odd man-child—a grown adult with a toddler’s vocabulary. The problem, though, is that people don’t treat him like a child. At the very least, toddlers receive positive reinforcement for putting their limited vocabulary on display. Frustrated, Sedaris tries to convince himself that he doesn’t even care about learning French, instead focusing on completing a number of repairs to the house and—when he and Hugh visit Paris at the end of the summer—buying incredible souvenirs.
Sedaris’s frustration and overall lack of interest in applying himself to the task of learning French makes it hard for him to feel at home in France. Even though everyone is kind to him and nobody looks down on him in the classist way he originally feared, he can’t deny that he occupies a strange position in French society because of his meager linguistic skills. In other words, he strongly feels the impact of his inadequate French skills, but he isn’t quite willing to devote himself to improving.
Themes
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Back at home after his first trip to France, Sedaris relishes his ability to speak to strangers. He’s also more aware of the people he sees who are from other countries. These people timidly make their way through the life in New York City. Watching this, Sedaris realizes that Americans tend to move through life abroad with an ingrained sense of security and privilege, always knowing they can say, “We’ll just call the embassy and see what they have to say.”
At home in the United States once again, Sedaris finds that his perspective on his home country has shifted. More specifically, he identifies a form of American arrogance, which gives people undue confidence when they’re abroad. It is perhaps this kind of arrogance that emboldened Sedaris himself to say “bottleneck” whenever somebody spoke to him in French, not caring that he couldn’t properly navigate everyday conversations. That Sedaris recognizes this dynamic when he comes home from France suggests that traveling is capable of broadening a person’s perspective.
Themes
The next summer, Sedaris goes back to Normandy with Hugh. This time, he says things like, “See you again yesterday!” When he leaves at the end of the summer, he once again vows to take French classes before the following year—a resolution he abandons as soon as he gets home. The next summer, he learns 300 new words, none of which are useful to his everyday life. He now knows how to say words and phrases like “exorcism,” “facial swelling,” “death penalty,” “slaughterhouse,” “sea monster,” and “witch doctor.” The following summer, he learns new words by reading a gossip magazine, though this is also useless in his everyday life in the countryside. The next trip, he learns phrases people actually use, imitating dogwalkers and picking up their strict commands.
Slowly but surely, Sedaris learns French. However, he goes about this process in a very unconventional way, opting to learn odd phrases like “facial swelling” before mastering how to have a simple conversation. Because most of the essays in Me Talk Pretty One Day are primarily structured to make readers laugh, it’s unsurprising that he focuses on his quirky approach to learning French, providing humorous commentary on the difficulties of learning a new language.
Themes
After Sedaris’s sixth trip to France, he knows 1,564 words. In New York, a large hotel begins construction outside his and Hugh’s apartment window, so they decide to move to Paris for a couple of years. Sedaris now looks forward to learning French in earnest and, moreover, to smoking wherever he wants.
Moving to Paris presents Sedaris with an opportunity to immerse himself in an entirely new way of life. However, the thing he’s most excited about isn’t that he will gain new experiences, but that he’ll be able to smoke indoors—something he used to be able to do in the United States before restaurants and stores banned smoking. In this way, he approaches his relocation to Paris as a way of recapturing something he lost instead of gaining something new.
Themes
