1. The main emotion in this reading seems to be confusion, particularly in the narrator. Sedaris very effectively, I think, showed the main character's confusion with the Tomkeys. The main way the narrator expresses their confusion is by attributing the Tomkeys' "weird" behavior to the fact that they didn't have a TV in the house.
2. Two parts I found humorous were, "It occurred to me that they needed a guide, someone who could accompany them through the course of a n average day and point out all the things they were unable to understand," and, "Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable." I thought that these were humorous mainly because of the style, but also because the narrator seemed so ignorant to the fact that people can live "non-normal" lives just fine.
3. Sedaris built the characters through interactions with other characters, adding details where necessary. For instance, I only learned that the narrator was a boy at the end of the story, but that wasn't important. Sedaris gave the important details, like the fact that he was curious about the Tomkeys and that chocolate bothered him that really mattered in the story.
4. The dialogue was used very well in this story. It was used when characters were talking about other characters, mostly. So, it added a layer of mystery to the Tomkeys, almost. The most powerful line of dialogue, though, was when the mother told the narrator to, "... really look at [themself]," because it showed such a dramatic change in the family's attitude.
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