Didion's Summary Of Why Keep A Notebook

“If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment

Her language become more and more crude, especially when she mentions how her “flesh seems to bond to the seat” (181). The reader can easily detect her ever-mounting anger with the situation she has put herself in and what at first seemed like a heroic act ends up being one leading to pure defeat. As an extension to this idea, Ehrenreich shows the reader how certain hardships can make it difficult to try new things. In multiple instances throughout the essay she uses crude language to display her disgusted thoughts and sense of hopelessness, but it can be seen specifically in the introduction. The introduction is based off of her entire experience; after her jobs at Hearthside and Jerry’s. She compares the environment at Jerry’s to a human body, and not in a very pleasant way: “The kitchen is cavern, a stomach leading to the lower intestine that is the garbage and dishwashing area…” She also uses descriptive items of food to depict its scent, combining strange and appalling odors such as “decomposing lemon wedges [and] water-logged toast crusts” (179). These phrases themselves create a negative image of the restaurant, commanding the readers to question how she could have possibly been forced to work in such horrible conditions. Ehrenreich’s rough language effectively shows certain emotions brought out by the transition from writer to waitress, a white collar to a blue collar job, and the hardships that it brought.

After reading the essays, “Lunch” and “Feet in Smoke”, the reader comes to realize the privilege and importance of family stories. Both essays portray a heartbreaking story of losing a member of the family either through death or losing them mentally.

Throughout the essay, Didion describes multiple random things that mean nothing to her, but were emotionally significant at the time she wrote them. Personally, I thought the tone used for both telling and talking about those memories seemed very nostalgic to her. Journals can be a way to remember who we were in the past, how we had thought and things we’ve done. Over time we forget things, and keeping a journal helps us relive both significant and insignificant events in our life that otherwise would have been blurred, or forgotten over the course of our lives.

The first part of this theme; a hard past forces people to learn to rely on themselves, focuses on the self reliance theme. One important example of self reliance was how “when [the kids] wanted money, [they] walked along the roadside picking up beer cans and bottles that [they] redeemed for two cents each” (Walls 62), they had to rely

Letting go of comfortable, familiar feelings is a task many individuals are not willing to forget. For example, in the final paragraph of “Goodbye to my Twinkie Days” Nguyen writes that she may never eat the ten pack of Twinkies purchased. Even all throughout Nguyen’s story, in excerpts from the first paragraph to the last, it is made clear that Twinkies are not healthy nor a necessity. Nevertheless, the author knows that there is a certain comfort in knowing that in only a short trip to the top of the fridge, the tasty packaged “time machines” would always be there, whenever

In Theodore Roethke's poem, "Dolor", He perfectly describes the feeling of despair and sadness. He fully captures the tremendous grief that comes with having the same everyday routine in life. He does so in a rather exquisite way, by using an office setting as his canvas, he paints the reader a picture of the despair, grief, and sadness that comes with the every day office life. He truly paints the picture of "Dolor".

The author uses tone and images throughout to compare and contrast the concepts of “black wealth” and a “hard life”. The author combines the use of images with blunt word combinations to make her point; for example, “you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet”. This image evokes the warmth of remembering a special community with the negative, have to use outdoor facilities. Another example of this combination of tone and imagery is “how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in”. Again the author’s positive memory is of feeling fresh after her bath combined with a negative, the fact that it was a barbecue drum.

Memories are important, they are a personal record of our past experiences, and could be called the history book for our life. In the poem "The Heroes You Had as a Girl", author Bronwen Wallace tells the story of a woman who meets her high school hero later in her life, reflects on her memories of him, and ultimately decides not to talk to him. The effect that this topic has on everyone is the knowledge that we can be captivated and let our memories control us, and by knowing that our memories hold that much power, it may make it more mentally efficient to make accurate, and personal decisions in a fraction of the time. The topic and overall meaning that this idea holds convey a message that resonates with the idea that memories are in fact the central hub of our decision making. People remembering memories can affect their perspective on their lives to such an extent, that they prefer to immerse their mind in their past memories rather than the current reality.

For the first time in 130 years, more young adults are living with parents until their mid thirties. Part of this could be an emotional attachment keeping them from leaving home because after they leave, everything will change. However, many are losing their real sense of home and are just using it as a place where they can avoid paying bills and many other responsibilities. Many young adults now do not understand the extensive sacrifice it is to leave their one and only home. In “On Going Home,” Joan Didion expounds on her struggle to connect with her current house, in a nostalgic and resigned tone, and vivid imagery, symbolism, and comparison Didion expresses the regret she feels every time she remembers she left her “home”.

For this essay I aim to show the importance of memory and of remembering the past in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid’s Tale is a ‘speculative fiction’ first published in 1985 but set in the early 2000s. The novel was in response to changes in US politics with the emergence of Christian fundamentalism, the New Right. Atwood believed that society was going wrong and wrote this savage satire, similar to Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’, depicting a dystopia which she uses as a mirror to hold up to society. I will be focusing on the main character and narrator, Offred, “a handmaid who mingles memories of her life before the revolution with her rebellious activities under the new regime” (book group corner), as she

Nicholas Sparks’ tragic love story The Notebook is a touching story about two people and their eternal passion of true love which is beautifully portrayed by Nick Cassavetes in the film. Pathos is used in the film to draw members of the audience to the characters and influence them to feel passionate towards the characters. Cassavetes does this by making the movie more dramatic than the book. The director effectively uses pathos to add drama in The Notebook which makes the movie’s audience more emotionally connected to the story. The plot is evidently more climatic as the main events are exaggerated in the film. The feel of the overall screenplay is distinctive than the novel. The characters also play

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.

To achieve perfection while bringing forth memories, the passage from Imaginary Homelands stresses how consciously writing about and indicating doubt in one’s recollection will help to patch the shattered state of the “broken mirror.” Rushdie starts Imaginary Homelands by describing an old photograph of the house he grew up in. He realizes upon a visit to the home in Bombay years later that because the 1946 picture is black and white his memory “ha[s] begun to see [his] childhood in the same way, monochromatically” (Imaginary Homelands, 9). Wanting to make his writing more vivid than merely black and white, Rushdie “realize[s] how much [he] want[s] to restore the past to [himself], not in the faded greys of old family-album snapshots, but whole, in CinemaScope and glorious Technicolor” (Imaginary Homelands, 9-10). Despite this desire, he explains in the passage that “his physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost” (Imaginary Homelands, 10). However, rather than forfeiting to his own mental limitations, he emphasizes that expressing the imperfections and doubts in his memory can strengthen a story:

The study habit I have endeavored to change is one that is manifested in every facet of the human experience. Memory is a huge portion of every activity we undertake in life, as vastly different consequences follow if our memories are honed or inferior. As a result I felt the great urgency, accompanied with an impending need, to hone my memory and render it fully-functional. The uses of memory are innumerable. As