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The Tapeworm Is In
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
Sedaris continues to struggle with correctly determining whether or not certain words in French are masculine or feminine. It simply doesn’t make sense to him that a language would gender its nouns, especially when there seems to be no logic driving this system. For instance, the word “vagina” is masculine—a fact that drives Sedaris crazy. According to him, there are two kinds of French that Americans in Paris tend to speak: Hard French and Easy French. Hard French is the kind of French he is trying to learn, which requires actually learning the language and using it correctly. Easy French, on the other hand, is just yelling English at French servers. Whenever Sedaris hears an American yelling that he wants a steak, for instance, he angrily thinks about how little this person knows, thinking, “That’s Mister steak to you, buddy.”
As a resident of Paris, Sedaris is able to recognize American arrogance when he sees it. He has already identified the confident way that Americans move through foreign countries, but now his concern is about how some Americans don’t even try to speak French when they’re in France. Of course, it’s worth noting that he himself was perfectly comfortable living in Normandy for an extend period of time without knowing any French except for the word “bottleneck.” Nonetheless, he is now invested in learning to speak correctly, and it is precisely because this takes so much effort that he resents his fellow Americans for not even trying.
Themes
One of Sedaris’s French friends tells him that French people never confuse the gender of a word. Even children, she says, don’t make this mistake. This discourages Sedaris, who develops a new technique: avoiding the problem altogether. Knowing that pluralizing words often obscures their masculinity or femininity, he starts asking for things in large quantities, meaning that he will frequently come home with four pounds of tomatoes or multiple radios. Needless to say, this places a financial strain on him, but Sedaris doesn’t mind. Finally, Hugh forbids him from going to the grocery store until he gets better at French, and though Sedaris can tell he’s mad, he knows Hugh will cheer up when he opens the multiple CD players Sedaris got him for his birthday.
Once again, Sedaris presents readers with an essay meant primarily to deliver a punchline. This time, the punchline is about how Sedaris bought Hugh multiple CD players for his birthday. Along the way, though, Sedaris airs his thoughts about how difficult it is to learn French, calling attention not only to the strange fact that French genders its nouns, but also to his own insecurity surrounding his lacking French skills. In this way, then, this essay is a perfect representation of the way Sedaris thinks, hitting on his insecurity and his knack for humorously revealing absurdity in everyday life.
Themes
