Name: Deekai Gbonimy
Course: Introducing to College Writing
Professor: Christopher Burlingame
Date: Oct 21, 2015 Now We Are Five
I learn that the author (David Sedaris) is known for his socially insensitive satire, shared blunt and self-deprecating stories, but his most memorable moments is center around Now We Are Five. In Now We Are Five, David talk about how he and his family coped with his younger sister’s suicide this summer. The author also let his audience know about his crazy family that contain six children and things that happen before the death of his younger sister Tiffany. Mr. David Sedaris is the oldest of a big family which has six children. He is a part of a family to goes on vacations, rent a cottage and have indiscipline people.
David Sedaris starts of his story by telling us about Tiffany and the suicide she committed in a beat-up house on the hard side of Somerville, Massachusetts. He also include his childhood memories spent at a North Carolina beach with a more recent trip after Tiffany death, demonstrating the unique way his family honored and remembered his sister. I believe David described his family’s trip to Tiffany apartment after she died, because he wants us to know that his family still love and cares about her. They found family photos torn up. After packing her old belongings, Sedaris’ father remarked on her lack of remaining material possessions. A person’s life reduced to one lousy box. Actually, there are two of them. Two lousy boxes,” Sedaris remembers his father saying. His father didn’t actually meant a person live is reduced to a lousy box, he was trying to explain that people belonging and all they have work for their whole life can be turn into memories which is put in a lousy box. Memories like picture, favorite belongings and clothes. Growing up in a tight-knit family with six children, Sedaris joked that on the weekends his siblings didn’t go on dates. “And leave the family! “Rather than attend a traditional memorial service, they honored Tiffany by laying on their childhood beach blanket, trading stories and, of course, tanning.
It seems that Tiffany was something of a self-imposed family outcast, who would fall out with every member of the family in rotation. She was also very good at making excuses for not attending family get together, which were a regular feature when Sedaris’ mother was alive. Was her suicide the ultimate get out clause? Sedaris never says that it was, and it would be ludicrous and narrow minded of me or anyone else to think that someone would go to such extremes just to get out of something, but there is something of an underlying sense of this throughout the text, which is further reinforced by Sedaris’ revelation that Tiffany was known for her drama and her habit for leaving chaos in her wake. In her tragic final act, Tiffany not only whipping up chaos, but also adding ‘dramatic exits’ to her repertoire of theatrical traits. According to some sources, many people are not pleased with the author for his article talk about his sister who committed suicide. He talk about his family leaving her to suffer and die. Death is known to be one the worst thing that can happen to an individual or family, but his family make fun out of Tiffany death