Being engulfed in flames has many different meanings depending on how you approach it. Such as an enlightening biblical experience like the burning bush of Moses, the feeling of panic or stress while choking in the smoke, like the witch hunts of time past with people surrounded by old friends who wish to feed off their death, or when a sudden stroke of inspiration or anger seizes your heart, sending it into an irascible frenzy with a burning passion. In When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris we witness recurring themes of death and conflicting morals with a slight bias towards the author.
Death is most heavily featured in the chapter The Monster Mash, where Sedaris receives a job at a mortuary and is shocked at how casual and ordinary the experience is. There´s no tears when dead bodies are hurled in, just business. After a while, the job starts affecting his everyday life, suddenly having a friendly chat turns into imagining them lying on the examination table, or how they might die that afternoon. He even receives a book that shows images of various strange forms corpses come in; including moldy, shriveled, stinking from 2 days worth of sitting in the sun, and men who
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Despite Sedaris believing the man a miscreant, he pities the poor fool and finds it in himself to reach an understanding. Sedaris had been living in France for a while now, but was still lacking in the conversation department. Conversely, the old man was shunned from the respect of his peers. Thus began their small talk. However, that was all it was meant to be, for when the old man came calling for Sedaris, having already awkwardly shown him his x-rays, and subsequently tarnishing his dignity, they ceased to speak until the old man died. We are left with more questions than answers: was the old man insane, a creepy recluse, or just deteriorating due to old