Previous
The Learning Curve
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Me Talk Pretty One Day, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Insecurity
Humor, Commentary, and Observation
Class and Belonging
Family, Love, and Support
Summary
Analysis
While attending a friend’s Easter dinner in Chicago one year, Sedaris excuses himself from the table to quickly visit the bathroom, saying he’ll be right back. When he enters the bathroom, he sees a massive poop floating in the toilet. Disgusted that somebody would leave this, he tries to flush it. It doesn’t go down. He only wants to pee and run some water over his face, but before he can do that, he has to find a way to get the large turd down the toilet, so he flushes again and again. This doesn’t work. As he frets over the situation, somebody knocks on the door, and his sense of urgency increases. If he stays much longer in the bathroom, he realizes, his friends will think he’s the kind of person who takes his time while “defecating” at parties—an idea that mortifies him.
Nobody wants to find themselves in the situation Sedaris now finds himself in. However, Sedaris is especially upset by such things, allowing the experience to exacerbate his insecurity. Rather than simply accepting that everybody “defecates” and that this isn’t actually that big of a deal, he worries incessantly about how everyone else will view him if they think he clogged the toilet. Once again, then, readers see just how much he cares about what others think of him.
Themes
Looking at the poop, Sedaris honestly considers reaching into the toilet, grabbing it, and throwing it out the window. He can’t even do this, though, because the apartment is on the first floor and some neighbors who are outside might see him do it. In light of this, he uses the handle of a plunger to start breaking the stool into smaller pieces. Meanwhile, the person outside the bathroom knocks again, and he says that he’s almost out. Thinking about the fact that everyone has bowel movements, Sedaris wonders if this experience has taught him a lesson. Flushing once more, the stool finally disappears down the toilet, and Sedaris decides to forget about the matter, opening the door and immediately setting himself to the task of “examining the suspects.”
Many of the essays in Me Talk Pretty One Day culminate with a final sentence that functions like the punchline of a joke. In this case, the entirety of “Big Boy” exists to support the humor of the final line, in which Sedaris contradicts himself. After successfully flushing the toilet, he finally reflects on the fact that everyone clogs toilets sometimes and wonders if he has learned a lesson from this experience. This lesson, it seems, might be about how he should learn to care less about how others view him, or perhaps it’s about how he should avoid making a big deal about embarrassing situations. As soon as he leaves the bathroom though, he starts “examining the suspects.” This is the essay’s final line, and it effectively erases Sedaris’s newfound resolution to forget about the matter entirely. Instead of moving on from this experience, he decides to subject his friends to the very same kind of judgment that he was so afraid they might place on him if he didn’t manage to flush.
Themes
