Difficulty: Introductory Prerequisites: Familiarity with the personal essay as a form. Having read David Sedaris's "Us and Them" (sometimes titled "Us and Them" from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, 2004).
This essay is a staple in English Composition courses because it packs several literary analysis concepts into one accessible, funny piece. David Sedaris recalls his childhood fascination with the Tomkey family, neighbours who did not own a television. The essay works as a case study in how personal narrative can carry themes of judgment, conformity, irony and self-awareness, all topics you will be expected to identify and discuss on exams. If you are coming into this cold, you need to understand what a personal essay is and how first-person narration shapes tone and meaning.
Sedaris spied on his TV-free neighbours, judged them harshly, and threw a tantrum when his mother made him share his Halloween candy with them. The adult Sedaris uses irony and self-deprecating humour to show how absurd his childhood attitudes were. The essay is a vehicle for analysing literary judgments, situational irony and the gap between a narrator's younger and older selves.
Personal essay
A short work of literary nonfiction in which the author writes about a personal experience, usually in first person, weaving reflection and meaning into the narrative. Think of it as a true story told with a point.
First-person narrator
The voice telling the story using "I" and "we." In this essay, the narrator is David Sedaris himself, but there is a crucial split: the child who lived the events and the adult who writes about them with hindsight.
Irony (situational)
When the outcome of a situation is the opposite of what you would expect. In simple terms, it is when what happens contradicts what should logically happen. Sedaris eating all his candy to avoid sharing it is ironic because the "solution" is more absurd than the problem.
Self-deprecating humour
Humour in which the writer makes fun of themselves. Sedaris uses this throughout to show that his childhood self was ridiculous, which makes the reader trust and like the adult narrator more.
Judgment (literary)
A character's or narrator's evaluation of another person, group or situation, whether positive or negative. In composition courses, you are asked to identify these judgments and then analyse what they reveal about the person making them, not just the person being judged.
Conformity
The pressure to behave the way most people in a group behave. In Sedaris's neighbourhood, owning a television was the norm. The Tomkeys' refusal to conform is what triggers young Sedaris's fascination and judgment.
Tone
The writer's attitude toward the subject, conveyed through word choice, detail and structure. In simple terms, it is how the writing "sounds." Sedaris's tone is wry and self-aware, poking fun at his younger self while telling the story.
The Tomkey family did not own or watch television, which young Sedaris found unbelievable.
His curiosity about what people could possibly do without TV drove him to observe them through their windows.
This establishes the essay's central tension: Sedaris sees TV as essential to normal life, and the Tomkeys' rejection of it makes them alien to him.
The Tomkeys had recently bought a boat.
On Halloween night, the family went to Mr. Tomkey's father-in-law's lake instead of trick-or-treating.
Because they were away, the Tomkey children missed out on collecting candy entirely.
When the Tomkey children came to the door after Halloween (having missed the night itself), Mrs. Sedaris felt sorry for them.
She wanted to be kind and could not bring herself to turn them away empty-handed.
She asked her own children to hand over some of their collected candy, which set up the essay's climactic conflict.
Young Sedaris makes repeated judgments about the Tomkeys. You need to be able to find these, quote them and explain what they reveal.
He calls the Tomkeys' lack of TV "the craziest thing I've ever heard," revealing that he sees television as so fundamental that life without it is incomprehensible.
He says the Tomkeys "have no idea how punny their lives are," projecting his own values onto them and assuming they are missing out.
He describes the Tomkeys giving out gumdrops for Halloween as "about as low as you can get," judging their generosity by his own candy hierarchy.
What the judgments reveal about Sedaris: These statements tell you more about the narrator than the Tomkeys. Sedaris is narrow-minded, quick to mock what he does not understand, and entirely convinced that his way of life is the correct one. The essay invites you to notice this, because the adult Sedaris clearly does not share his childhood self's view.
Is his behaviour fair? No. The Tomkeys' choice not to own a television may have been religious, philosophical or simply personal. Sedaris judges them without understanding their reasons, which is a textbook example of how conformity pressures people to see difference as deficiency.
The essay is written by an adult looking back at his childhood, and much of the humour comes from the gap between the child's perspective and the adult's awareness.
Example 1 (the candy-cramming scene):
"Had I been thinking straight, I would have hidden the most valuable items in my dresser drawer, but instead, panicked by the thought of her hand on my doorknob, I tore off the wrappers and began cramming the candy bars into my mouth, desperately, like someone in a contest."
This is ironic because Sedaris destroys the very thing he is trying to protect. His "solution" to sharing is worse than sharing would have been. The adult narrator knows this and presents the scene with comic precision to make the child's behaviour look absurd.
Example 2 (the mother's logic about moving):
"Within a year we would move again and, as she explained, there wasn't much point in getting too close to people we would have to say good-bye to. Our next house was less than a mile away."
The irony is that Mrs. Sedaris's reasoning (do not get attached because you will move) is undercut by the fact that they moved less than a mile. The move barely merited a goodbye, yet young Sedaris adopted the attitude anyway because it gave him a convenient excuse not to make friends.
Sedaris refuses to hand over his candy because he feels he earned it by trick-or-treating. The Tomkeys were not there, so in his view they do not deserve any.
This moment captures the essay's larger theme: the gap between generosity and self-interest, and how children (and adults) rationalise selfishness.
If he had shared, his mother would have been proud, the Tomkeys would have been grateful, and the incident would have been unremarkable. Instead, his refusal creates the essay's most memorable scene and its emotional core.
Students often think Sedaris is genuinely criticising the Tomkeys. He is not. The adult narrator is criticising his own younger self for being judgmental.
Students sometimes assume that the essay's "message" is that you should share your candy. The essay is doing something subtler: it is examining how we judge people who are different and how we rationalise our own selfishness.
Some students read the irony examples as straightforward comedy. They are comic, but the exam will ask you to explain the mechanism of the irony (what was expected vs. what happened), not just say "it's funny."
Students occasionally confuse the child narrator's views with the author's views. Sedaris the adult does not agree with Sedaris the child. Recognising that gap is the whole point of analysing a retrospective personal essay.
⚠️ Be ready to identify and quote specific judgments Sedaris makes, then explain what each reveals about him (not the Tomkeys).
⚠️ You will likely be asked to find examples of irony. For each, state what was expected, what actually happened, and why the contrast is meaningful.
⚠️ The distinction between the child narrator and the adult author is a high-value exam topic. Be prepared to explain how Sedaris uses hindsight to create humour and self-criticism.
⚠️ The candy scene is the essay's climax. Expect a question about why Sedaris refuses to share and what his refusal symbolises about conformity, selfishness or childhood logic.
⚠️ Do not confuse "irony" with "something funny." The exam will want the technical definition applied to specific passages.
True or false: Sedaris spied on the Tomkeys because they were doing something illegal.
False. He spied because they did not own a TV and he was curious about how they spent their time.
Fill in the blank: The Tomkeys missed Halloween because they went to ______.
Mr. Tomkey's father-in-law's lake (they had bought a boat).
True or false: The adult Sedaris agrees with his childhood opinion of the Tomkeys.
False. The adult Sedaris uses irony to show that his childhood views were narrow and absurd.
Fill in the blank: When Sedaris's mother asked him to share his candy, he responded by ______ instead.
Cramming the candy into his mouth to avoid handing it over.
True or false: Irony in this essay means the same thing as "something funny."
False. Irony is the contrast between what is expected and what actually occurs. It can be funny, but the humour is a byproduct, not the definition.
Q: Why does young Sedaris begin spying on the Tomkey family?
A: He cannot believe a family would choose not to own a television. His curiosity about what they do instead drives him to watch them through their windows.
Q: Identify one judgment Sedaris makes about the Tomkeys and explain what it reveals about him.
A: He says their lives are "punny" (meaning pathetic or small) because they lack TV. This reveals his assumption that television is necessary for a full life, and it shows how quick he is to dismiss people whose choices differ from his own.
Q: Explain how the candy-cramming scene is an example of situational irony.
A: Sedaris tries to protect his candy from being shared by shoving it all into his mouth at once. The irony is that his "solution" destroys the candy for himself too, giving him a headache and a stomachache rather than the enjoyment he was trying to preserve. The outcome is worse than sharing would have been.
Q: What is the difference between the child narrator and the adult author in this essay, and why does that distinction matter?
A: The child narrator is judgmental, selfish and unable to see beyond his own worldview. The adult author looks back with self-awareness and uses irony to highlight how absurd his younger self was. This distinction matters because it creates the essay's humour and its deeper point about how people grow out of narrow thinking.
Q: Why does Mrs. Sedaris insist on giving candy to the Tomkey children?
A: She feels sympathy for children who missed Halloween through no fault of their own. Her impulse is generous and social: she cannot turn away children asking for treats, even after the holiday has passed. This contrasts with young David's selfish reaction.
This essay connects to broader composition themes around rhetorical analysis: identifying how a writer's choices (tone, structure, word choice) serve a purpose. If your course covers rhetorical strategies, Sedaris's essay is a worked example of how humour and irony function as persuasive tools.
It also connects to narrative perspective and reliability. The idea that a narrator can be unreliable, or at least limited, appears across fiction and nonfiction. If you study unreliable narrators later in the course (or in a literature module), Sedaris's child-vs-adult split is a gentle introduction to the concept.
Finally, the themes of social conformity and othering tie into broader cultural studies or sociology modules. The way Sedaris treats the Tomkeys as strange simply because they are different is a small-scale version of how societies marginalise people who do not follow majority norms.
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