Analysis Of ' On Self Respect By Joan Didion

The point of keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking. Author, Joan Didion, in her essay, “On Keeping a Notebook” explains how to keep a notebook and why. Didion’s purpose is to inform us on how she keeps a notebook and why notebooks are useful in helping us to remember events that happened in the past. She adopts a sentimental tone in order to emphasize how many memories are kept alive by keeping a notebook. Didion uses ethos, pathos, and different rhetorical devices in her essay to explain her point.

While reading Joan Didion’s essay “On Going Home” one may be reminded of a sense of home and family. In this essay Didion recreates the feeling one gets when one visits a place from the past or while reminiscing about fond memories. This memory is marked by the reflective thought about the ability to be able to pass this same sense on to another. Didion’s “On Going Home” is like a flood of warm memories leaving you with a single reflective thought.

One’s individuality and freedom are questioned when it does not conform to society’s ideals. This is often demonstrated in real life, as well as in popular literary pieces.

Joan Didion is wearing oversize black sunglasses in a crowded, dark movie theater where the film about her life is premiering. Standing beside her nephew Griffin Dunne, who directed the documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (Netflix), the 82-year-old Californian’s all-black ensemble plays well with her ashy white bob: Tucked slightly under her chin, its color is stripped and striped, but its body and character are as full as ever. It serves as a reminder that no matter her age or the style of the decade, her hair always seems effortless and elegant. It was blunt and short in the ’60s, when she released Slouching Towards Bethlehem, the book of essays that put her on the literary map; long and middle-parted to fall into a slight S-shaped wave in the ’70s, around the time she penned The White Album, which included her harrowing story on the Manson murders; fringed and peppery in the ’80s, and up until the early aughts with its Bush politics. Throughout it all, her signature lengths appear as if they’ve been dried in the easy Malibu air—even when she’s physically in New York City. A place where she found her first job, at Vogue, and a place she loved and found love in, with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. New York City was also a place she eventually lost, like many other people and places and things in her life.

How do we define “human?” This is a question that has become more difficult and bewildering to answer as time passes day by day. Judith butler tries to answer this age-old question of how we define “human”. In Butler’s essay, “Beside Oneself” it demonstrates the predominance of sexual orientations and how the role of society has influenced human’s lives. In turn, the essay asks many questions that challenges the readers to think critically and look within outside the norm and interpret for themselves what one believe the answer for Butler’s ideology. However, Butler failed to define clearly the most important question, how do we define “human?” Although, Butler made the claim that to be defined as human is to be part of the society and be accepted into the social norms, humans should not be based on standards of being accepted by the society. Instead humans should be defined by humanity (caring for those in need), and the freedom to critically think for ourselves.

In Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion writes many short stories in which she describes California in the 1960s, focusing on the subculture of a group referred to as “hippies”, who were characterizing a new way to live- in peace and harmony. John Stuart Mill argues that different experiences in living are beneficial to society, even the Hippie Movement of the 60s, because social experiments benefit societal progress. Didion’s condemnation of this social movement is illogical. The Hippie Movement shed light on the importance of acceptance and openness in sexual matters, religion, race, cultural diversity and emphasized the need for every individual to “find oneself” while focusing on achieving peace in society and opposing the government

Oscar Wilde once said: “Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals”. We often critics society yet we all part of it, we buy the last relieved IPhone and the newest popular piece of clothing. We live in the same society described by Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, a dystopia in which everything is about the mass. Then, comes Clarisse, a young girl who lives in the real world and does not the follow the conventions. Trying to look at our world through her eyes makes you realize…

I still sat through church every Sunday, and I found myself like Edna Pontellier, with an “outward existence which conforms, an inward life which questions” (Chopin 20). My private deviation and questioning separated me from the values my parents had emphasized so heavily for so long. Seymour Krim discusses these kinds of private situations; he claims the privacy of them makes us “ache with hopelessness” (580). The societal standards I held myself to presented this loss of hope, and the ache bogged me down with unhappiness, contrasting it with the hope a belief in a greater power brought

Life itself is unpredictable. In an instant, your whole life as you know it could be turned upside down or right side up, without any warning at all. On December 30, 2003, Joan Didion’s life took an unexpected turn when her husband “suffered a massive coronary event” in their living room. As she discusses in her book, he passed away despite the efforts of paramedics and doctors, and she was left to pick up the broken pieces of her life without her significant other of nearly 40 years. In the midst of all of the heartache she faced, her daughter was also comatose in the hospital after getting a severe case of pneumonia and septic shock. The book that she wrote after and during these events was titled, “The Year of Magical Thinking,”

This self-incrimination will lead to more veneration from the public, not condemnation or analysis of his sins. The narrator’s assertion is ture because it is human nature to see society and act in society in reflection to a defining character. This assertion relates to the workings of the inner mind and how these expand to apply in the real world and in life.

Betty Friedan explores the troubles that women have faced and the reason behind these troubles in The Feminine Mystique. She defines the “feminine mystique” as a limitation set on women’s femininity across America in the 1950s and early 1960s. She explains how she believes it came to be so widely upheld due to magazines written by men and how it has had an effect on women in a negative way. According to Friedan, due to the feminine mystique developed from magazine stories, society forces women to abandon any career aspirations in order to devote their lives to being housewives and mothers, as well as be completely fulfilled with this life path.

Isabel Allende’s short story “The Proper Respect”, the theme that when people are excluded from society, they will go to drastic measures to be included. Abigail McGoverns’s actions reflects the theme when she says “What I want is a respected family; I want them to call us don and doña and not dare speak to us without removing their hats” (228). Abigail wants to be apart of the inner circle of the rich; but because Domingo Toro acts like a “ragpicker” (228) by gaining his wealth in less extravagant ways than what Abigail would prefer, they are excluded. Abigail feels that the only way she can get respect is to be accepted into society. Abigail wants more than having everything she needs to lead a very comfortable and luxurious life, she wants

Throughout this year, I’ve ready numerous bodies of text varying from poems, plays, novels, and essays, which were all meaningful literary pieces with profound influence on pertinent topics as well as controversial ones. These literary pieces, alongside the work of Miranda July, an author who best represents my current generation (millennials), aided in unveiling the universal theme: reality is dictated by your perception. This paper will discuss the texts read and analyzed throughout my English class, as well as explore any similarities between the overarching theme and Miranda July.

The morning dew was still on the ground from the steady drizzle the night before as I glanced outside to inspect the weather. I woke up as usual that morning around three o’clock threw my sweatshirt on, stuffed my bag with a dry towel and suit, grabbed some breakfast, and headed off. I didn't rush this time frantically trying to make it there on time. Instead I walked to my car step by step as my mind slowly turned to mush from the feeling of my life slipping away. I knew that as an millennial older generations saw me as an sheltered child, coddled through all my problems. If only this was true I thought, oh how life would be different. I was being crushed by an ever growing pressure to remain swimming on an national level, but still obtain and function within my two jobs. On top of all of this school was to be my primary focus, but I was unable to effectively operate in my school work because of this consuming monster. To them though it's only two jobs, it's only swimming morning and afternoon, it's only school. To them we aren't teens or young adults but children who are given everything.

The standards of Western Civilization dictate an average person’s life. The clothes we wear, the produce we buy, and the votes we make are all impacted by the typical societal standards. These rules never change unless a large group challenges the rules or breaks away from the typical fad. The change of standards between the conformist 1950’s and turbulent 1960’s is an example of this. Elvis Presley and Martin Luther King Jr. directly contributed to the standard change because of hip thrusting and a dream for African Americans to finally be free. These standards define generations growing up in that period, these norms must be challenged in order for change. Today, standards are changing in a world where tweets dicates foreign policy and the rights of American citizens are being taken away. Warsan Shire is a poet fighting to defy America’s current societal standards. Although she is British-Somalian, she still has a voice. Through her motifs of beauty and loss, Shire challenges societal standards regarding beauty, mental disorders, rape culture, and immigration and deportation.