"Me Talk Pretty One Day" Rhetorical Essay

Novelist, David Sedaris, in his narrative essay, “ Me Talk Pretty One Day” discusses his experience in a French class when he was forty-one. He draws a clear image of how he felt being someone who is learning a second language and how his effort and determination to learn will eventually help improve his French. The purpose of this antidote is to display that through perseverance and effort, you can conquer your fears and even learn something new, which to him was understanding French. Sedaris uses pathos, diction, and simile to appeal to his readers and make his point.

The excerpt appeals to pathos by describing how he felt on his first day of class and depicting his thoughts of his teacher. Through the use of imagery, he paints a vivid picture of how he felt on his first day. He starts off by stating how “nerve-racking [it was] because [he] knew [he’d] be expected to perform… everyone into the language pool, sink or swim,” (paragraph 5). This appeals to the audience’s emotions because we’ve all had a time in our life in which we were as worried about something as he was. Sedaris then stated how he was always frantically copying down everything that his teacher said and scrambling “ to think of an answer to what had obviously become a trick question,” (paragraph 15). We were able to connect with the author because we had all felt the way he did when we did not understand a question and was worried that we would be called on. This ties back to the purpose of the antidote because the narrator demonstrates that he is willing to work hard to understand his teacher and learn French.

A humorous diction was used throughout the excerpt to emphasize his lack of wide-range vocabulary in French. In addition to his lack of knowledge in this branch, a humorous diction helps with understanding how the narrator improves over time to one day understand his teacher’s harsh criticisms and belittlement. Daniel Sedaris would often replace words that he did not recognize with gibberish or with random letters that would sound like what his professor said. An example of this is when his teacher would say to him, “ Were you always this palicmkrezjs...Even a fiuscruzsws tociwegixp knows that a typewriter is feminine” (paragraph 17). This shows how he was incapable of understanding his teacher’s insults because of the language barrier. At the end of the passage, when he would finally understand his teacher's comments, he would stop using gibberish. The author tries to explain that even though he was constantly criticized and belittled, his efforts helped him to learn a new language. And although the way he learned was very different from the traditional ways of learning a new language, his determination of wanting to comprehend with what his professor was what motivated him.

Towards to middle of the passage, Sedaris uses simile to compare his excruciating lessons to a joining a gang. According to the author, “Learning French is a lot like joining a gang in that it involves a long and intensive period of hazing,” (paragraph 22). This simile is used to explain how much effort needs to be put into that class in order for him to learn. It is also used to display how the lessons took a toll on his emotions and his self-esteem because “sometimes [he would] cry alone at night,” (paragraph 6). He compares his time in his class to a refugee camp because the “[only comfort] was the knowledge that he was not alone,” (paragraph 25). Although his French teacher’s verbal abuse caused emotional damage to the narrator, his eagerness to escape the abuse propelled him to work diligently to improve his French.

Belittlement can often make people feel empty or worthless. However, this type of verbal abuse can also prompt people to work diligently to become a better image of themselves. Sedaris’s experience portrayed a positive effect of being belittled because his experienced motivated him to work harder so he would be able to understand French.