- Published: November 19, 2022
- Updated: November 19, 2022
- University / College: The University of Warwick
- Language: English
- Downloads: 24
As David Sedaris grows up he takes upon a very unhealthy habit. AS he gets older he finds himself to get more addicted to cigarettes and changes his whole life s he can adjust himself to make the accessibility of cigarettes easier. Many people who become addicted to cigarettes change their life styles to accommodate their needs. By incorporating, similes, personification and satire; Sedaris hyperbolizes the idea of being addicted to cigarettes changes the way someone runs their life.
Sedaris recalls memories of his addiction to cigarettes and how it all began. He uses many rhetorical elements to express his story; when he was young he went to an American Tobacco plant and as a souvenir they gave the kids a pack of cigarettes. Then as a kid he drove embroidery needle into his mother’s carton of Winstons, she then beat him for twenty seconds. Sedaris pokes fun at this by stating that his mother stopped hitting him and said “ that’s…not…funny” meaning that by her smoking it put her out of shape. After a while he becomes addicted to smoking and he thinks so highly of cigarettes. He even categorizes the act of picking a proper cigarette like choosing a religion.
After as a joke Sedaris says that it is easier to switch cigarettes than religion. “ Kools and newports were for black people and lower class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry.
Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren’t”. He personifies each cigarette and gives each one a specific audience they are meant to be for. The diction Sedaris uses is scattered throughout the text, “ thought that they’d make me appear masculine or at least as masculine as one could look in a beret and a pair of gabardine pants”. He uses satire and diction to get the point across smoking changes the way people run their lives. Overall in the essay written by David Sedaris he touches upon the years of his life when he was not smoking and the years in his life when he was. He uses rhetorical terms such as similes, personification, and diction to express his story of how smoking has impacted his life.