Article Summary
Life is particularly intriguing and complicated especially when looking at the choices that people make in life in the light of the story, “Life Is a Smorgasbord”, by Dan Lewis. The title of this story states that, life is a smorgasbord. This idiom makes one wonder why life can be likened to a smorgasbord. To begin with, smorgasbord is a buffet meal consisting of several hot and cold salads, dishes, and meat among others.
The narrator’s mother invites him to a party, and he has already prepared for that party having cleared the whole day of other duties just to attend the dinner. In fact, the whole family would attend the dinner at Hometown Buffer, Elaine’s favorite joint. At the party, there are a number of foodstuffs. All the twenty-one family members have arrived. After a little hold up on the line, people get in and it feels to them like entering a land of plenty. There are mass-produced cuisines flowing from stainless steel cornucopia.
Essay on the article
Fundamentally, this story compares life to a party. Life can be stressful and disorganized because of the many confusing options that it offers. Therefore, it is a smorgasbord. The author heaped a lot of food on his plate probably because he wanted to taste everything at the buffet.
Therefore, when he finally begins to eat the food, he realizes he is merely ingesting it and not enjoying the food. Only Lorna, and her child, misses serving chicken. She, however, feels chicken may not be the best for her citing that, there is a good catfish while the rest of the group is eating the bait.
The goal of the narrator was not to waste time trying to make a decision one-food type but to try a little bit of everything. Overwhelmed by seeing, smelling, and tasting, he did not get the genuine taste of the food. To him, it was like feeding thirteen people at once. Life is like a buffet that people want to enjoy everything in one sitting. Everyone wants to taste everything on the menu like combining Chinese and Mexican foods.
The danger of looking at life as a smorgasbord is that one tries everything and eventually life becomes confused. When asked by the cashier how the meal was, the narrator answers ‘confusing’. This means despite having tasted everything, the narrator still did not enjoy it. Besides having a heap of food on his plate, he kept looking at other peoples’ plates.
This element shows that, in life, people are not contended with what they have, even when it is in plenty. He wondered how, these people took remarkably little food yet there was plenty at the buffet. An important issue to note is that, the writer likens his life to a huge menu without sampler plate. The narrator says she is scared of just taking one thing since he could be filed hence fail to taste everything else.
For this reason, he ends up having small shares of each and these in most cases do not go well together. A lesson to learn is that, there is no enough time in someone’s life to enjoy all or even a small fraction of world experiences. Bearing this in mind, individuals need to make sacrifices. For instance, playing basketball for an hour was equal to forfeiting one hour of reading. The trick is to choose certain options so that one can enjoy few options to the full.