David Sedaris’s Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk is a collection of short stories, which are thought-provoking, symbolic, interpretative and at times delusional. Through the world of animals, the author immerses the reader into the world of morals, contrasts and human-relatable relationship patterns. The main devices, used for this, are personification and irony. With personification it is more or less straightforward: animals represent people, which adds spice and expressiveness to the stories. Irony, however, is used in its full force, making each story somewhat grasping and multi-layer, adding deep surface meaning to it. Overall, the purpose of the book is to present the reader with intricate plots, which serve the function morally educating experience, being able to be both amusing and cruel. Using the device of irony accompanies the purpose in all of the 16 stories.
For example, The Cat and the Baboon is a story offering an insight into hypocrisy. The Baboon is the source for such hypocrisy and is represented as a too chatty grooming salon worker. The conversation starts with discussing the party, and Baboon dwells upon gossip-like arguments and brings up topics, not necessarily interesting to Cat. The reader can already sense irony through how stereotypically the situation is depicted. Cat does not show interest in the conversation, as many grooming salon clients, she just wants to survive the procedures and leave the salon looking better than before. She is bombarded with condemning statements about a wedding Baboon attended and, apparently, did not like. It seems that the wedding was very similar to Cat’s ceremony; however Baboon continues the gossip and dispraising of the wedding. This ironical stereotypization creates life-like tension, which contributes to relatability of the story. Also, it creates and highlights the contrast between the characters, which makes the story more polar and easy to follow. Then, following the path of the conversation, Baboon brings up that she cannot stand dogs (Sedaris 6), attempting to flatter the client. Though Baboon had multiple dog-friends, she says to condemn their behaviour and praises how graceful the cats are. The verbal representation of the whole situation’s ironical nature is met in the final sentence, which asks “what it hurt to pretend otherwise and cross that line between licking as and simply kissing it?” (Sedaris 7). Considering the dialogue development, the hypocritical nature of the conversation and the bold statement in the end, it can be concluded that irony: 1) creates the overall atmosphere of the story; 2) exaggerates it, making the story more expressive; 3) creates easy-to-follow stereotypes, which make the story relatable; 4) presents a clear moral effect.
In The Mouse and the Snake, the device of irony bears different load in the narrative, as the overall purpose of the story is different. Here it is to show that some things are unchangeable due to their nature, in the case of the story it concerns that friendship between mice and snakes is impossible. At first, the audience witnesses Mouse, who looks after Snake. Such a duo is evidently ironic and creates suspense of two possible endings. Along with overall plot function, ironical statements also perform the role or verbal amusers. For example, Mouse calls Snake a “rescue snake,” as she rescued him from “a life without her love.” With Mouse being so confident in her being right, she brings Snake food, sacrificing little ones of the wood. She is lost in her love to the Snake, which blinds her from the real state of affairs. The plot takes its turn, which is cruel and rather disillusioning, with Snake’s belly, as Sedaris puts it, is eventually “full of unconditional love” (49). Again, the last sentence is a peculiar final accumulation of the story’s ironical meaning. In the story some stereotypization is also present, with Mouse being deluded by love and advocating it by all means possible, including amoral ones. In addition, the suspense mentioned above sets the whole atmosphere of the plot, as was the case with The Cat and the Baboon. Nonetheless, as here irony is used the send a different message, it also has different functions, which are 1) creating suspense; 2) engaging verbal aesthetics.
All in all, each story in the collection presents the reader with something different, yet moral and mind-puzzling. Plots are twisted, allegorical and didactic. The fables can be interesting to both children and adults. Moreover, the tales “often end abruptly,” (Bender 1) leaving space for shock and interpretation experience. They allow the audience to re-evaluate some beliefs through the prism of personification that also contributes to the ironical leitmotif or each of the tellings. The utter purpose of the book may be defined as triggering such re-evaluation. To reach the this purpose, irony is used in various ways. Firstly, it shapes the plot and creates the atmosphere of the book, which grasps’ reader’s attention and intrigues. Also, irony creates suspense and relatable images of the narrative that appeal to the reader, contribute to expressivity and deepen the effect of the tellings. The author also uses ironical expressions to make the stories aesthetically pleasing or to summarize the moral message of the story is an aphoristic manner. The device of irony plays an important role through the book, with the author implementing it skillfully and out of the standard way. It allows the collection to acquire its unique, rich taste and present moral essentials under a curious light.
Works cited
Sedaris, David. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. City of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication. Print.
Bender, Tara. “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A review of the new book by David Sedaris.” Retrieved from <http://tarabendermedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/SQUIRREL- SEEKS-CHIPMUNK.pdf>
