Let It Snow – David Sedaris analysis

In the short essay “Let it Snow”, David Sedaris recounts his 5^th grade adventures during a week of five consecutive snow days in North Carolina. Through explaining his mother’s extreme frustration with he and his four sisters, Sedaris is able to appeal to the reader’s pathos. Not only can he relate to adults who have been irritated with their children before, but he can also relate to anyone who has ever been a child extremely excited by the idea of a snow day. The way that Sears maintains the upbeat mood of the piece throughout its entirety helps build the anticipation as the conflict approaches – their angry mother has locked him and his sisters out of the house. “’You are going to be in so much trouble when Dad gets home!’ we shouted, and in response my mother pulled the drapes. Dusk approached, and as it grew colder it occurred to us that we could possibly die. It happened, surely. Selfish mothers wanted the house to themselves and their children were discovered years later, frozen like mastodons in blocks of ice”. Sedaris’ appeal to pathos is extremely evident here as he explains how the children’s natural instinct was to tattle on the mother to their father. Any person can relate to being a child and not knowing how to handle a situation, therefore resorting to telling an adult and making them solve the problem. In the next sentences, Sedaris creates an image for his readers as the children begin to get very worrisome about how long they will be out in the snow. His simile goes to an extreme – it is highly unlikely that they will freeze to death – however, it enables him to show how free the children’s imaginations are and the way that children can often fear the worst in any situation. Sedaris’ essay, “Let It Snow”, is fairly simple in its structure, but its imaginative aspects are able to give the readers a sense of what it is like to be a child in a carefree mood until a suddenly occurring frightening situation, a feeling that all readers can relate to.