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Jenny Jones
Blandford
UWRT 1101-028
8 September 2015
Go Carolina
David Sedaris exhibits his actual self through his memoir, Go Carolina, by talking about
his speech impediment. The real significance behind this story is not to tell the audience about
his circumstance but to display to them his true personality. The whole deeper meaning behind
this literature portrays that Sedaris possess stubborn, smart, and creative qualities. He uses these
qualities to hide the fact that he identifies as a homosexual.
Throughout Sedaris childhood he underwent speech impediment therapy with a
counselor at his school. During the sessions he would lie about his manliness. This included
pretending to like certain football teams, talk about sports, and other things that most boys would
have conversations about. He really enjoyed baking and being crafty but hid this from Ms.
Samson because he didn't want to seem out of the ordinary. He gave the impression of being
extremely intelligent when it came to things like this because he would conjure creative ideas to
hide what we eventually find out, which is that he his homosexual. He also used his clever
personality to avoid words that could display his speech handicap. He would come up with wise
phrases to replace words with an s sound so in turn, all of his teachers believed that he was
extremely well mannered and brilliant. This expresses his true self by showing his creative and
intelligent qualities.
In this memoir, Sedaris also shows that he is a tad bit stubborn and persistent while in
therapy and around his household. He fought with his mother to get a thesaurus to be able to

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replace the s words instead of trying to fix his minor setback. Although this benefited him in
strengthening his vocabulary, it still displays his strong- willed persona.
Sedaris judges people as well. He sees Ms. Samson as an airhead with no talent or skill in
her field of work. He analyzes her tactics and the ways that she tries to help him. Through his
memoir he talks about how he gets judged by others for being homosexual. He doesn't want to be
judged and hides his true self from everyone surrounding him but in turn also judges others for
the things they do. In respect to this at the end of the memoir he sees Ms. Samsons true self
when she lets go of being the tough teacher. Because of this, I think he has a self realization in
the fact that he should not judge others for what they seem to be at first impressions.
In this memoir David Sedaris expresses his true personality within the deeper meanings
of the piece. He displays his smart, stubborn, creative, and accepting qualities throughout the
story. Sedaris used his brilliance to write a marvelous piece on an experience in his life but also
showed the true traits that he possess. These traits help him to succeed in life. The facets he has
got him to where he is now, a successful writer. Sedaris is also a person to look up to in the sense
of being strong willed in a situation. In his circumstance, his impulses made him more intelligent
and showed his cleverness which can be used in many other general life situations. As you can
see, Feelings, thoughts, and images can be shown through text in order to portray a message or
just to show who you really are. Even though this is a story about his speech impediment,
Sedaris illustrates that through writing you can express many more things than just a narrative.