“But things change once you've been together for 10 years. They rarely make movies about long-term couples and for good reason. Our lives are boring.”
As a humorist, Sedaris uses his wit and sarcasm to address difficult subject matters that would otherwise be heavy to handle. In the assertion, he addresses how love fading is just part of life regardless of the delusional notions we have about romance. He takes notice that a long-term relationship is never romanticized in popular culture for obvious reasons. In that banal nature of everyday life is also present within the margins of romance. Since the novel charts his personal relationships and those of his siblings too, the statement refers to his sentiment on relationships over time.
“Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.”
The statement alludes to the social constructions and stereotypes aligned with sexuality in our society. Sedaris uses humor to address his inability to defend himself from the bullies while in school. Through this, he reexamines his childhood and how he dealt with being different whilst in search of his sexuality. The novel tackles the issues suffered by gay people be it in their childhood or into their adulthood. He speaks on his father kicking him out of the house when he came out to him. In Chicken in the Henhouse Sedaris even further addresses the prejudice and marginalization of gay people through history in America.
“I might reinvent myself to strangers, but to this day, as far as my family is concerned, I’m still the one most likely to set your house on fire.”
The assertion illustrates how Sedaris will always be the black sheep of his family despite who he becomes in the outside world. Sedaris is an unapologetically honest writer who uses wit to delve into real issues despite their tragic nature. Henceforth this does not sit well with people around him particularly his family. In the story Put a Lid On It he addresses how his vocation to write about the family’s private life creates a rift between the siblings. Thus, the statement shows how the family views him as a loose cannon of the family.
