45 pages • 1 hour read
David SedarisNaked
Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Coins
Coins hold a fascination for David in his childhood as an implied extension of his desire for fabulous wealth. The first line in Naked is “I’m thinking of asking the servants to wax my change before placing it in the Chinese tank I keep on my dresser” (6), which is part of young David’s aristocratic fantasy life.
Imagery and plot points pertaining to coins appears throughout the chapters centered on Sedaris’s early childhood. In “Get Your Ya-Yas Out!” he describes his father’s childhood as one of extreme poverty: “As a baby my father had been confined to a grim corner of the newsstand, where he crawled on a carpet of newspapers, teething on nickels. He never had a bed, much less his own room […]” (26). Louis’s deprived childhood starkly contrasts with David’s middle-class comfort. This is symbolically exemplified in “True Detective,” when one of the Sedaris children steals Louis’s collection of “one hundred and twelve” (56) silver dollars for no apparent reason: “I had seen and counted these coins many times. We all had, but who would go so far as to steal them?” (56). Young Louis chewed on low-value coins with few creature comforts; as an adult, his standard of living is secure enough that he is able to collect high-value coins for fun. The coins represent stability within this volatile family structure.
Injuries & Disability
Depictions of physical and psychiatric disabilities recur throughout Naked. In his youth, Sedaris suffers from “tics.” Both his mother and his grandfather struggle with substance abuse and dependence on alcohol, leading him to quip, “The Leonard family coat of arms pictured a bottle of scotch and a tumor” (64). Sedaris blames his mother’s dependence on cigarettes and alcohol for her fatal lung cancer, which he describes in “Ashes.” As a young adult, David spends time volunteering at a psychiatric hospital and goes out of his way to befriend handicapped students in college.
Try as he might to romanticize his mother’s trauma and manipulate his friend Peg’s degenerative nerve condition to his advantage, as when they benefit from others’ kindness while pretending to be newlyweds, witnessing death and severe disability is harrowing for David. These encounters with real physical and mental challenges and obstacles challenge his propensity for idealization and fantasy.
Performances
In Naked, performances occur on stage, on film, and in social situations. Sharon, David, and Lisa are fascinated by actors and fictional TV shows. David becomes enamored with Shakespeare and theater in high school. David, Lisa, and their parents all have a tendency to spin outrageous lies and “perform” for themselves and others. Likewise, David meets a number of people who are similarly inscrutable: T.W., Dupont Charles, and Jason all affect various personas in social situations. Everyone Sedaris writes about is in constant negotiation with reality. The characters are always “acting” for themselves and for others. By this token, Sedaris’s liberal use of hyperbole and fabrication in Naked results in its own kind of performance: it is a book with a tenuous relationship with the truth, masquerading as a factual personal history.
Privacy
Sedaris writes that privacy was important to him from an early age. At the end of “Chipped Beef,” he bargains with his mother, exchanging labor and emotional support for “twenty dollars and a written guarantee that I would always have my own private bedroom” (10). In “A Plague of Tics,” he struggles to adjust to college life because he doesn’t want his dormmate to witness his compulsive rocking: “Having memorized my roommate’s course schedule, I took to rushing back to the room between classes, rocking in fitful spurts but never really enjoying it for fear he might return at any moment” (20). As a young man, David keeps his sexual identity private to protect himself from social ostracization. His desire for privacy grows into a desire for total solitude, which in “C.O.G.” evolves into isolation and crushing loneliness. His lifelong habit of making up fake identities and lying about himself is a recreational activity, but it also speaks to a desire to obscure himself from others. Spending time at the nudist park—a place which is antithetical to privacy—resolves David’s character arc. His neurotic need for privacy is quelled through extreme exposure.
Related Titles
By David Sedaris
