Me Talk Pretty One Day Analysis

Shaquita Fuller
Professor Kaufman
Rhetoric 101
2 December 2012
Outcomes of Negative Reinforcement
People are faced with many obstacles ranging from education to relationships with other people. Some relationships with certain people may cause one to feel as if they are not important, potentially leading someone to the point where they ask their selves “Am I good enough?” In “Me talk pretty one day” by David Sedaris, he explains his past experiences from moving to France and having a discouraging teacher who belittles him on the way that he talks. In a second article inside The Toronto Star titled “Death by anti-social media; friends and strangers weep for her now, of course they do” focuses on the many obstacles of a teenager named Amanda Todd who was bullied in high school. Both articles read convey two totally different situations but they are both surrounded by different difficult life situations involving the lack of self-esteem in one person that is caused by others.
The biggest conflicting issue in the David Sedaris essay was the experiences that he faced when being verbally attacked by his discouraging French teacher, whereas in the Amanda Todd
article the victim, Amanda Todd was surrounded by the acts of cyber, verbal, and physical bullying starting when a topless picture that she shared on the internet when she was in the seventh grade was put into the hands of the wrong person bringing forward Amanda Todd’s everyday struggles of being bullied. Both of these articled reflect a high level of negative enforcement, but in different ways. David’s essay states that because of his discouraging teacher he no longer wanted to talk to anybody around him because he felt as if his speech wasn’t good enough and in the alternate angle the article inside The Toronto Star expresses the tragic loss of a teen who is tortured and disrespected by her peers. With both beginning perspectives put into par, they also ended with different outcomes, David Sedaris adds in his essay that instead of giving up he took the criticism from his teacher and put it to good use by studying harder and learning how he could become better, but with the Amanda Todd article, it ended with an exposed image of herself all over the internet and her committing suicide.
Although both of the readings that I read are obviously different they share similar ideas. Starting with they both write about how one can be effected socially by having the hardship effects of other people and one’s environment follow them. David Sedaris states:
My fear and discomfort crept beyond the borders of the classroom and accompanied me out onto the wide boulevards. Stopping for a coffee, asking directions, depositing money in my bank account: these things were out of the question, as they involved me to speak (289).
Similarly a quote from the alternative article inside The Toronto star shows how Todd couldn’t escape from her problems either:
She couldn’t escape it, not by changing schools, not by moving cities, and not by crushed attempts to reinvent herself, be born again as a girl different from the one who’d make some youthful errors of judgment (Death, A1).
Both of these quotes express a great amount of developed self –esteem issues. Sedaris stated how his teacher discouraged him to talk to others even outside of the classroom which comparing to the other reading becomes very significant to the fact that Amanda felt that since she couldn’t escape the torture that she received for her topless picture, she decided to escape them by moving schools and no longer associating herself with others.
Through the many connections that I have observed in each article I have produced the reason for the different outcomes in each story, which appears to be because of the different amounts of pressure put onto each person by others. In Todd’s story, it reflects how she was a victim of an individual segregation. She had no friends or anybody to comfort her because they all turned against her. “Her clot of pestering pursuers, youths wouldn’t let her be, attacked in person as well, ambushed her on the way home from school, left her moaning in a ditch.” (Death, A1) With the lack of peer acceptance and the lack of social support from others her age Todd felt hopeless. Whereas Sedaris wasn’t alone; he was a part of a group who experienced the same amounts of verbal abuse. “My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone” (289) Being in a group did not fully effect Sedaris’s life because he wasn’t being singled out; he potentially overcame the teachers comments which allowed him to better himself.
A month before Todd committed suicide; she posted a non-verbal video explaining her struggles through note cards on a YouTube video stating “The guy came back with my new list of friends and school, but made a Facebook page my boobs were his profile pic… cried every night, lost all my friends and respect people had for me again… Nobody liked me” (Amanda) while she expresses her heartbreaking story, she made it clear that by not being accepted she felt a sense of low self-esteem “I felt like a joke in the world” she explained.
Likewise, using Sedaris own words as well he expressed the troublesome effects of his teacher in the classroom “Before beginning school, there’d be no shutting me up, but now I’m convinced that everything I said was wrong” (289). Sedaris stated in regards to his developed low
self-esteem.
With the conclusion of suicide in the Amanda Todd’s story; having the lack of social support from same aged peers I believe that there should be some action took place to prevent another story of the same case. Referring to Sedaris story, on the account of the older age and higher levels of maturity, police officials and parents should become deeply involved to reduce hate and bullies in younger aged settings. Those who bully should face a severe punishments to successfully learn what’s right, also there should be better positive reinforce programs to help the bullied victims that exposes them to different ways to deal with the negative enforcement given instead of using suicide as an option and putting it to good use to discover a positive outcome of determination as Sedaris achieved.

Works Cited
Amanda Todd Suicide-Full Oringinal Video. By Amanda Todd. Perf. Amanda Todd. Youtube, 2012. Online.
"Death by Anti-social Media; 'Friends and Strangers Weep for Her Now, of Course They Do'" TheToronto Star 13 Oct. 2012, NEWS sec.: A1. Print.
Sedaris, David. Me Talk Pretty One Day. The Seagull Reader Essays. Second ed. N.p.: Joseph Kelly, 1956. 285-90. Print.