Story US And Them Essay Sample

“Us and Them” is a story by David Sedaris that is originally from his book Dress your Family in Corduroy and Denim which was first published in 2004. The story is about a family that does not have a TV in the neighborhood and the viewpoint comes to us from the author David, but when he was a boy. The boy’s perspective of the fact that this family has not a TV is in one sense not real because he is so young. But on the other way around it is real because he is a boy and so his thoughts are pure. The basic point of the story, as we shall see is that TV is a distraction which makes us not need to be in the moment but instead we have something that can distract us.
TV is not just a thing that is all over the American culture. In my culture and in many others TV is an important part of life. So much time is spent on it that sometimes we forget how life can be if there is no TV. Most people after school they go into their rooms and then they turn on TV or watch videos on the Internet. What would people do if there was no TV then? One suggestion from David as the young person he is reflecting upon is that maybe they read. Reading requires us to work for our information where TV is just sitting it in front of it and it gives you its message for no work at all. This is one of the big problems with TV. It is true that when the family next door, called the Tomkins family gets a boat they spend time on a lake all weekend. Even though the young David looks badly on this activity, it can easily be argued that this is better than what he is doing which is just sitting with his parents and watching TV.
David attempts to discover what this life without TV is live because he wants to know how is it people act, what they do when there is not the just going home and watching TV. “They had no idea how puny their lives were,” he says. But if they have no idea their lives were puny, then is it not that perhaps their lives are not as puny as those who “know” that they have puny lives? This is an important question when analyzing the conclusions of this story. It is a question that is never answered though, because David in much of the story and in his remembrance of childhood only focuses on his self. He notices one thing though that says a lot about their dinner which shows that there was joy in the house of the Tomkins, maybe more than in the house of David, where there was only TV. He says that during the time of the dinner he sometimes sees this, “During the meal, Mr. Tomkey would occasionally pound the table and point at his children with a fork, but the moment he finished, everyone would start laughing” (Sedaris, 803). This we can assume is the joking of a father with his family. For at first he is all sitting down together with is family and it seems that he might be angry, but it is clear that his pointing of the fork is just a joke. This is another thing; the family is sitting down together and are talking and joking at dinner. I have seen that many families instead of sitting down together they decide to take their food into the room with the TV and they watch TV while they are eating. Instead of being with each other, they are just in the same room as each other. Instead of knowing and enjoying each other, they enjoy and know the TV.
I sense that David Sedaris is trying to say things by saying the opposite. He ends his story with instead of looking deep within himself at bad parts of him that his mom wants to change. He ends with instead him looking at the TV after trying to deny kids candy. It is true that it is strange that the Tomkins are trick or treating a day after they should be. But the mother has a compassion that David does not have. And perhaps this compassion would be there stronger if he was not always just watching TV instead of being in the present moment around him he would have to be without it was for the TV. This is the lesson that we can learn from this. Not that we need to never have TV in our life. But too much of anything is too much be it food or chocolate. This is not to be different with TV. TV that has too much of it in your life is not a good thing and everyone should be of the mind to limit it in their life.