Founded by Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s publishes a website entitled McSweeney’s Internet Tendency where authors submit pieces of humorous literature; one of whom is Christy Vannoy. On this site, she has published 18 articles, including A Personal Essay by a Personal Essay. In the essay, Vannoy is an applicant to get her life story inside of a national magazine where the winner is the person with the saddest life. As she listens to the other contestants trying to sell themselves to the judges, she reflects back on her own life and adds insight to her adversaries’ lives while trying to prove that life is not as bad as it seems. For example, Vannoy wrote, “It wasn’t as if they’d landed in state care, like I had, and been delivered straight into the wandering hands of recently paroled foster parents. Being gay is about as tragic as a stray cuticle, and I wasn’t born a Jehovah’s Witness yesterday” (210-211). It is shown that Vannoy uses ethos and logos perfectly; she makes the reader believe her logic by portraying herself to be more knowledgeable about how hard life can be in comparison to the others. Her satirization of the other contestants helps convey and accomplish her didactic purpose by making said purpose easy to interpret and repeatedly shown. Vannoy essentially reinforces the age old adage of making lemonade when given lemons. She does so by writing, “But the thing about life is that you simply cannot settle for melancholy, even when it’s true. You are not a tragedy, you are a personal essay. You must rise above and you must do it in the last paragraph with basic grammar and easily recognized words” (212). She is saying that people must fight to overcome the difficult times in their lives in order to live happier ones. Her point can be interpreted through examples, proving that Vannoy has accomplished her purpose. As a result of Vannoy writing about overcoming adversity and comparing problems, the essay is mainly intended for those who are depressed about their lives and the problems they face.
Lemons Into Lemonade
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