Sarah Vowell's 'Vindictively American'

Sarah Vowell’s Take the Cannoli is a series of Vowell’s own personal stories of American life. “ Vindictively American,” is about Vowell’s experiences of how people in other countries view American culture. She wants to show that even though chaos goes on all around the country, there are still good sides to American life. A second story of Vowell’s is, “ Species-on-Species Abuse.” In this story Vowell talks about how commercialized Disney is. Everything is made to make life seem perfect, and issues seem to be gone when there. But in reality, there are major issues like school shootings going on across the country. In, “Vindictively American” Vowell does a great job of helping readers visualize the places and items that she is talking

She compares life in Holland to her life in the U.S a few times throughout the story. “... I missed it so much I pretended that behind that behind the constant Dutch ceiling of clouds there was a big range of mountains with snow way up top.” (Vowell 66) This is one of the many reasons Vowell misses the United States; she is having trouble explaining the greatness of the U.S that is not seen when you are not experiencing it first hand, and because everything in the U.S is so “huge” and everything in Holland is so “little.” In “Species-on-Species Abuse,” Vowell uses detail to help the reader visualize the story. One example is at the beginning of the story when Vowell says, “His [a three-year old's] grandparents, or at least I assume they’re his grandparents, are sweating and waving their arms and wearing panicked smiles trying to get his attention, pointing at Cinderella and then the Little Mermaid, yelling, Look! Look!, their eyes full of melting dollar signs,” ( Vowell 108) the reader can imagine the grandparents being frantic hoping that the money

She compares Jackson Pollock's paintings to the chaos in the United States. Even though the paintings are chaotic, they’re beautiful. In the United States, people remain patriotic through all of the chaos, and people still crave the beautiful scenery and the culture, when they are away from the United States. Along with her comparisons of the largeness of the U.S compared to the smallness of Holland. One way that Vowell described her views toward Disney in, “Species-on-Species Abuse,” was by saying, “ Disney World is like the liver of the country where the blood of America gets filtered,” ( Vowell 110) referencing the fact all Americans travel to Disney through the use of metaphors. She describes how “species-on-species abuse” happens in throughout America. People kill each other as well as themselves for unknown reasons. Vowell explains how so many things are different in America due to change. Books can’t be taught because they won’t be understood, or the language is too vulgar. The lessons have changed, and issues that had once been talked about freely would cause major issues if they were read or talked about in a