Response to Us and Them by David Sedaris

As a class, we recently read Us and Them by David Sedaris. This was a fantastic narrative to read because the narrator uses voice to express the age at which he's narrating. He talks in the past tense at the beginning, when he starts third grade. Now, the narrator is probably an adult, but his voice in the text makes him sound like he is in third grade. Us and Them is about the narrator's experience with his new neighbors when he moves to North Carolina. The neighbors, the Tomkey family (who "don't believe in television"), come to trick-or-treat day after Halloween, which they weren't in town for. He refuses to give away his candy, stuffing his candy into his mouth, but his mom grabs some and gives it away.

The way I believe makes the narrative sound like a third grader is narrating it are the use of exaggerations and thoughts only kids would think. One example of those is when the narrator first moves to the suburbs in North Carolina from the country of New York, saying "I hoped that in walking around after dark I might witness a murder." Another is when the Tomkeys come to trick-or-treat the day after Halloween, and the narrator says "Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable. This was one of the things you were supposed to learn simply by being alive, and it angered me that the Tomkeys did not understand it." An adult would most likely not say these things, so it makes the piece more authentic.