The past two weeks, I have been hustling and driving myself to ignore the lazy pleasures of a teenager to read and lose myself in the complicated verses of a book called Persuasion. Jane Austen, one of the most well known Romanticism author's of her time, is notorious for creating a work of heavy and sometimes satiracle meaning. Meanwhile, I hooked onto my more sly personage and snuck away from the british literature to relax with a witty humorist known as David Sedaris (who is also making an appearance here on our very own Trinity Campus soon). When You Are Engulfed In Flames is filled with whacky and amuseing anecdotes in the first person point of view of Sedaris himself. Some of the things that happen, I found, are hard to believe at times, but at a closer look you find that the narrator's diction is what makes most of the stories inbelieveable and more creative than most. With both quirky professors leading the classes into discussion with each other, I've rarely found myself wondering "why me? why this class?" What I have found is the astonishing similarity between Sedaris and Austen. Where David uses comedy and witty sarcasm to make a point about society, Austen manipulates the characterization and quality within each point of view to spread her message about marriage and women's value. Yes, opposite tactics, but by looking at the bigger picture you see that even though they two highly intellecutal figures who might be looked down upon by their generation, whether for homosexuality or for simply being female, they've reached for a very successful goal of satiracl ironies and a message that touches everyday life.
David Sedaris by theNerdPatrol is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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