Assignment #3

        My thoughts on "Standing By' by David Sedaris is that it is a very interesting piece that makes one really think about it. Right away the reader sympathizes with the narrator, because they probably have gone through some of the things he has. It also makes one wonder why he is writing an article on problems with flight. Was he commissioned to write this? Did he shop the article around? Who was his intended audience? One could argue that he probably was not commissioned to write this, because no self-respecting magazine would commission an article on flight delays. So he must have written it for his own column or with intent to shop it around. His direction with this piece seems to state that he was a satirical piece on the air traveling. This first story takes place in 2003, not to long after the September 11^th tragedy that changed not only The United States, but also air travel. 

         After a few moments of hearing the men behind him complaining about the nation, Sedaris tunes them out as well. He daydreams to a previous adventure while trying to catch a flight. “I was on the people mover…when the voice over the P.A. system asked Adolf Hitler to pick up a white courtesy phone.” (277) He uses this as humor, but it is also a very good lesson in social respect. When most people hear the name: Adolf Hitler, they usually feel a hatred for the name. However, just because that one man at one point in history committed some horrible crimes, does not mean that all people named Adolf or Hitler will or have committed the same crimes or any crime at all. Parents are still naming their children Josef and that is Stalin's, another dictator, first name. What Sedaris is saying is that one cannot judge a book by its cover. That the person you are criticizing might be exactly just like you, but forgot to do laundry the day before his vacation and was forced to wear a certain T-Shirt.

          I thing that Sedaris uses the ideas and thoughts in "Standing By" to make his readers realize that they probably have acted some of the ways that his characters do or have been the victims of these actions. It makes the reader open their eyes to their actions and the actions of other around them. It is amazing when one realizes that they are either the perpetrator or the victim of these actions.

         My questions are: Have any of you ever experience anything like these scenarios? Have you been the perpetrator? the victim?