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Guillen 1
Carolina Guillen
“Perfectionism: A Flaw in the Human Character”
What is like to be a perfectionist? A perfectionist sets the bar higher than the average
person does, holds the belief that anything less than perfect is a disaster, and controls its actions,
and everyone else’s to ensure some expected quality results (Bauer lines 13-20). Perfectionism is
hardly a positive trait; it threatens the mental health of the people whom attacks, and it is usually
the fruit of inner fears and insecurities. For Anne Lamott, writer of “The Crummy First Draft,”
such insecurities come from not being “able to get the magic to work… [feeling the need to] get
up and study [her] teeth in the mirror for a while… [and] remember to breathe…” (Par. 1). Just
like in Lamott’s essay and Bauer’s short story, “Pancakes,” people often experience frustration,
anxiety, and desperation. However, daily problems have proved to required solutions that always
come from embracing the flawed nature of the human being.
People from different background, age, and profession, can be lured to perfectionism to
face the obstacles they encounter in a regular basis. The protagonist in “Pancakes,” Jill, feels a
void inside product of the constant uprooting her family has put her through, and now she
obsesses with being perfect so that “people would like [her] and want to hire [her], would want
to be [her] friends… [She is] terrific…[she] can handle [anything] because, as a terrific person,
[she] has an organized system that always works” (Bauer lines 78-80, 197-198). In the same
way, writer Anne Lamott expresses her alleged inability to write a good food review even after
having visited a restaurant several times and carefully written down everything useful, studied it
and attempted to organize it in paper (Par. 2). Therefore, both “a waitress of grit with a strategic
battle plan” (Bauer line 67) and a demanding ex “clerk-typist” (Lamott Par. 2) believe that
perfectionism is the key to success in everything that matters to them.
Guillen 2
In general, perfectionism is more stressful than helpful when dealing with difficult
situations. Anne Lamott suggests that she would rather die before trying to improve a piece of
bad writing (Par. 4). The anxious mood of this paragraph affirms that, indeed, she takes very
seriously her work as a writer; but “even after [she’d] been [writing reviews] for years, panic
would set in… [she’d] write a couple of dreadful sentences, XX them out, try again, XX
everything out” (Par. 2), which indicates that she does not take flaws very well. Likewise, Jill
feels the unbearable pressure of not letting anybody down when the Ye Olde Pancake House,
where she works, starts filling with new customers arriving all the time and chaos rises in the
tables and the cash register, and she is the only waitress in the place, panicking because her
system might not always work, after all (Bauer lines 280-288). The setting of the story helps the
author convey the point that there will always be something that throws a person off balance, and
