‘Jesus Shaves’ by David Sedaris

Jesus Shaves by David Sedaris takes place in a French classroom. David’s humor throughout the story plays an important role as he manages to keep the reader concentrated until the last sentence of the passage. “It was my second month of French class” (415) is what he states I deduced students were all in the same basic level of grammar as well as culture as they are practically new to the course. But as you keep reading, you see something different happening in the story. His classmates were at a different level of what he was, and the way he uses his sense of humor to describe the different way his classmates acted is pretty funny. He talks about the woman from Morocco, who is basically the class showoff. She doesn’t have any problem whatsoever as she has spoken French since her childhood, being in the class just to improve her grammar.

Thanks to the details he uses you are able to visualize even minor things that were happening in this classroom. When he says that the Moroccan woman leaned back in her seat and shouted the answers because basically she was just tired of raising her hand to answer all the questions is an example of the major but at the same time minor details he is including to make this story more appealing to the reader. As we Sedaris moves on with the story, it’s funny the part where they are talking about Easter. Not being able to use proper grammar can make your sentence have a whole different meaning. The different definitions of what Easter is that were given in class so that the Moroccan woman would have a better understanding of it are all comical. None of them expressed, for what I know, the true meaning of Easter.

A little after, it’s hilarious how they complete end up talking about food; it’s like that’s what is more important for them. All the explaining wasn’t important at the end because the Moroccan lady was still confused on what the true meaning of Easter was, and she simply didn’t care about it anymore as we see that she put her attention back into her book. “I wondered then if, without the language barrier, my classmates and I could have done a better job making sense of Christianity, an idea that sounds pretty far-fetched to begin with. (###). Or was it just because sometimes Christianity is hard to explain even to people that perfectly dominate the same language?.

The story comes to an end with a reflection of faith, completely relying on the certainty that everybody can definitely better themselves.