Go Carolina

David Sedaris, in his essay “Go Carolina” (2000), claims that there are flaws in the system of therapy and treatment of unique students. Sedaris supports his claim by comparing his teacher to an agent, having a careful choice of diction, having a humorous tone, exaggerating, and using personal anecdote throughout almost his entire essay. By using personal anecdote and his touch of humor, he is able to drag the reader to empathize with his daily life as a student who has experienced this flawed system. He hopes that he will connect with his readers in a way that they will understand and do their best to make people who seem different or weird feel comfortable with being themselves or working to improve or change.

2. Reflect on how humor is used to get across a point that may not be funny.

As students, especially of middle and high school, use humor as a way to pick out issues or abnormalities another kid or adult may have. Sedaris uses humor when explaining the stereotypes of different types of kids in school, including himself. He makes jokes of the way he talks, the fact that he does not like sports, and the possible future he may have, as this is the way other students take about his different characteristics. Sedaris not only points out the humor in the challenges of his life, but in his speech therapists’ as well. He is showing that the humor kids use to make fun of or ostracize other students can be harmful, but is so common. He shows that students use humor against both other kids and faculty and presents this as a serious issue, as it clearly affects him in the story.

3. Use a few lines from the essay to characterize Sedaris’s tone.

“Whereas those around me might grow up to be lawyers or movie stars, my only option was to take a vow of silence and become a monk. My former classmates would call the abbey, wondering how I was doing, and the priest would answer the phone. “You can’t talk to him!” he’d say. “Why, Brother David hasn’t spoken to anyone in thirty-five years!”

These lines show Sedaris’s humorous, yet embarrassed tone. While he makes jokes of his ability to speak, like any other student would, he is still bothered by the fact that he has both a voice and personality that may cause people to make fun of him. While he jokes of becoming a monk, so he will no longer have to speak, there is some truth to his yearning to be silent. He does not want his voice to be so noticeably different.

4. Locate a few places where Sedaris uses hyperbole to get across his point. How and why is he using that exaggeration?

Sedaris uses hyperbole when he compares the speech therapist to a secret agent and calls her “Agent Sampson”, when he overthinks the response to his favorite football team, and when he ponders the reasons for Mrs. Sampson’s party at their last therapy session. Sedaris uses exaggerated details to get his point across. while he could simply state that the therapist was calm, yet on a mission, he created a whole idea of how he viewed his therapist that we could connect to. If he did not exaggerate, it would be hard to understand his view of the story. We would not be able to understand how it feels to be a student in this type of position. The use hyperboles allows the reader to understand how the author feels throughout his experience.