Family, Love, and Support Theme Analysis

One thread that connects many of the essays in David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day is his attention to the ways in which family members and loved ones interact. Moreover, Sedaris looks at how exhausting and emotionally draining it can be to put up with a loved one’s eccentricities. This dynamic is especially on display in Me Talk Pretty One Day because everybody in Sedaris’s family—including Sedaris himself—seems to have so many eccentricities to begin with. More than anyone else, though, his father gets swept up in his own farfetched ideas and idiosyncratic beliefs, subjecting his children to his intense fascinations and expecting them to share his whims, many of which fail to interest Sedaris and his siblings in the slightest. And though they often get fed up with him and hope that he’ll simply leave them alone, it’s rather obvious (both to them and to readers) that his tiresome and quirky behavior is, above all, a manifestation of how much he loves his family and wants to support his children. Of course, the ways that he tries to support them are narrowly confined to his own beliefs about what would be best for them, but readers get the sense that Sedaris and his siblings put up with this because they know he only wants to help them. In turn, Sedaris paints an endearing yet somewhat unconventional portrait of what it means to care for somebody, essentially implying that loving people sometimes means knowing how to put up with them.

Part of Sedaris’s exploration of familial relationships indicates that a sense of obligation often arises when well-intentioned family members go to great lengths to do something for their loved ones. This dynamic is apparent in “Giant Dreams, Midget Abilities,” in which Sedaris’s father gets so swept up in the idea of getting his children to create a family band that he completely ignores the fact that none of them actually wants to learn how to play an instrument. Inspired after seeing a concert by the jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, Sedaris’s father signs Sedaris, Gretchen, and Lisa up for music lessons despite their protests. Swallowing his resentment, then, Sedaris starts taking guitar lessons out of a sense of obligation to his father, though he rarely practices because he has no interest in learning to play the guitar. Similarly, his two sisters don’t take to their instruments, but this doesn’t deter their father, who is thrilled by the idea that his children are taking music lessons. As the three siblings clang out terrible musical phrases, their mother tries to drown them out by turning up the radio, but their father is overjoyed, saying, “A house full of music! Man, this is beautiful.” Considering this, Sedaris notes that nobody could ever call his father “unsupportive,” even if “his enthusiasm border[s] on mania.” By acknowledging his father’s support even though it irks him, Sedaris recognizes that his father is only trying to contribute to his overall happiness. The only problem, of course, is that his father focuses on what would make him happy, not what would make his children happy.

The flipside of this dynamic is that, despite his burning desire to push his children toward the things he himself values, Sedaris’s father is capable of loving them even when they ignore his overbearing attempts to influence their lives. Sedaris outlines this in “You Can’t Kill The Rooster,” describing the odd but touching relationship that his father has with Sedaris’s youngest sibling, who calls himself The Rooster. The Rooster is significantly younger than the other Sedaris children, and because the other siblings haven’t completely met their father’s expectations, he becomes their father’s “last hope.” This means that his father counts on him to turn into the kind of man he hoped Sedaris might become, but The Rooster does the complete opposite. Instead of speaking in what his father would see as a cultured manner, he swears constantly, calling everyone—including his father—“bitch” and “motherfucker.” He also frequently smokes marijuana in the living room, and instead of going to an Ivy League school as his father hoped, he drops out of a technical school and starts working as a landscaper. And yet, his failure to live up to his father’s expectations does nothing to interfere with their extremely close relationship. Indeed, Sedaris’s father and The Rooster have a touching bond, and his father never fails to find positive things to say about his youngest child, regardless of the fact that The Rooster is the complete opposite of what he has always hoped for in a son. In the same way that Sedaris has learned to live with (and even tentatively appreciate) his father’s overbearing nature, then, his father has learned to love The Rooster for who he is—not who he (Sedaris’s father) wants him to be.

All in all, Sedaris’s portrayal of close relationships encompasses the idea that supporting loved ones doesn’t necessarily require doing much more than simply loving them in spite of their shortcomings. This sentiment surfaces throughout Me Talk Pretty One Day and applies to Sedaris’s relationship with his partner, Hugh, as much as it applies to his relationship with his father. In turn, readers see that love often functions in unglamorous but fairly pragmatic ways, as Sedaris demonstrates that successful close relationships are sometimes founded on little more than the ability to tolerate or overlook otherwise frustrating traits.