A Supposedly Fun Thing ill Never Do Again

For most people even the idea of being able to relax and finally go on a vacation is exciting but for David Wallace being pampered seems unpleasant and he feels uncomfortable getting too comfortable. He receives “stress from pampering” and a “weird kind of pampering-paranoia”. Throughout the whole essay Wallace is very critical and judgmental not only of the cruise, but of its staff, and passengers as well. To express himself in his writing, he uses a lot of repetition and metaphors to get his point across to the readers. While this descriptive essay is humorous and an easy read due to the language, it is also very detailed and a little too verbose for my liking. On one side this creates imagery and makes the readers feel like they are on the cruise with David, but its this same thing that also makes it exhausting to read. There is a lot going and most of the time the extensive details of little things like the deck chairs or the inside of his bathroom are trivial to his overall experience. What seems like his pointless rambling, makes the reader doze off and become disinterested. And just in case we didn’t know enough already, Wallace includes lengthy footnotes that elaborate even further. Wallace never actually states that he isn’t enjoying the cruise, but through his language we can make this implication. “I have seen a lot of really big white ships.....I have seen camcorders that practically required a dolly...I have seen a toupee on a thirteen year old boy.” (257). He goes on like this for almost a whole page, describing what would seem like interesting experiences but by saying “Is this enough?” he shows us that he is annoyed with everything he has encountered.He compares the ship to many things, but one that I found to be most shocking is his comparison to the holocaust, “...its unwitting echo of the Auschwitz-embarkation scene in Schindler’s List”(270). In spite of all this, he is still able to see the natural beauty of his surroundings compared to