Joan Didion Slouching

Jane Addams, what a powerful name without saying anything about her. But not too many people know the great lasting impact she has had on our society. Being one of the founding people of sociology and the only woman, expectations was held high for her. I believe this generation should know her influences, the contribution to society and her significant impact.

The second half of the 1960’s seen another upsurge of young adults; a subgroup opposed to the fundamental thoughts of others and their social and economic supports; mainly because they believed that dominant mainstream culture was crooked and flawed; and needed to believe as they did in a way(s) of life geared to protect something they could not earn, buy, or passed on. The something philosophy is compromised in a complex egotism based on criminality; with an ulterior (self-preservation) motive of exacting some form of Utopia for it and with others relative to its concept. These groups of tie dyed conformists are anti-establishment and commonly known as hippies. They first gained a reputation in the U.S and then England, and are the extent

There are many aspects for my mind to conceive while reading the articles why I write by George Orwell and Joan Didion. There are many different factors in triggering an author’s imagination to come up with what they want to write, and why they want to write it. In most writings a purpose is not found before the writer writes, but often found after they decide to start writing.

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.

Los Angeles possesses the characteristics of great fame and fortune as well as immense homelessness and poverty. Often times, young people are misled by the financial success of some and assume that is typical of city people. Writers Joan Didion and Carol Muske-Dukes characterize the realization that an adolescent’s lifestyle is not suitable for the demands of a city as signaling the dawn of the apocalypse. In the essay, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Didion highlights how the failure of society is brought about by a family’s inability to fulfill traditional roles and a lack of education as exemplified during the Hippie movement. While poet Muske-Dukes utilizes gothic language and allusion to illustrate the notion of an apocalypse in the poem “Like This”.

While writing this story she did not interview anyone because when she tried to have a conversation with the hippies all they would say to her is “Groovy”. Even when she tried to talk to the cops they would not even talk to her about what was going on. The welfare agency that helped the hippies out were called the Diggers and they did not trust her and that she was demonizing the counterculture. She did think that they were right. Even though the mainstream press was conflicted regarding the hippie phenomenon.

The introductory and concluding paragraphs of Joan Didion’s essays provides context for its entirety. She opens her first essay declaring “This is a story about love and death in the golden land, and it begins with the country” (3). In reality, this sums up every single essay within the collection. A majority of the texts deal with the theme of love such as “John Wayne: A Love Song” and “Marrying Absurd” (29, 79). Additionally, many of the texts deal with the theme of death, such as “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” and “On Morality” (3, 157). But, every single essay deals with the theme of environment. Didion describes Los Angeles as both an alien place and haunted. This statement is ironic after readers complete the text, due to her eventual

A Windy Night in Los Angeles In her 1968 essay, Los Angeles Notebook, Joan Didion opens her essay with a brief account about the natural phenomenon that is the Santa Ana winds. In her view, the winds are an awesome yet frightening freak of nature; an intangible and inexplicable feeling that passes you once a year. Though science has prevailed with an explanation, the Santa Ana winds are unexplainable. Through her use of diction, selection of detail, and vivid examples, Didion is able to convey her view of the Santa Ana winds.

Hi, did you know that I knew Jane Addams? I did, and she was a very inspirational person. She did lots of good things in her life time. Jane Addams first opened Hull House in Chicago in 1889. She opened it because she new it would be a good thing for not only the people in Chicago but all over the world. At Hull House she provided a vital service to a community that was generally neglected. In the early days of Hull House Jane Addams and her friend Ellen Gates were just planing on teaching art and literary classes. But when neighborhood residents requested that Hull House expand its offerings her and her friend started teaching classes like English, along with practical skills.

The ranges from a poor background to middle class families provides for the girls to each have differing expectations of them from their culture. Along with that, each girl has clearly differentiated events in their lives that cause them to lose their innocence. One event, even in its simplicity, is enduring a mother’s lecture where you realize she thinks you are promiscuous and not what she wants you to be. This may be considered rather simple, but it provides ample awareness that things in your world are not what you may have thought. The events of living in a war riddled country and dealing with the destruction and death of people you care about can affect and resonate within a person on a much deeper level.

“Life After” opens through the following words: “Life changes fast. / Life changes in the instant. / You sit…to dinner and life [concludes]. The [pity question]” (Didion). Joan Didion composes such lines not long following how her husband has died, a fellow writing composer named John Gregory Dunne.

To have self-respect is to have a certain amount of audacity to show character and morals for oneself. The excerpt from Joan Didion’s, “On Self-Respect,” tells how characteristics like courage, responsibility and being strong is something you can gain and is insight into being raised a certain way. Didion’s thoughts on self-respect appear valid in comparison to my own thoughts on the subject of self-respect and how I perceive society in America.

In 2017 our thoughts and actions are guided and molded in large part by social media, reality television shows and pop culture. Without realizing the extent to which constructed reality and self-curated life exhibitions shape how we see the world, we form perceptions and establish standards of what our lives should look like based on stories and photos posted on Snapchat and Instagram and find ourselves reflexively belting out song lyrics that directly contradict our values. Joan Didion, a unique and relatable but brilliant author, seems to have an understanding that the challenges she faced as a freshman in college in the 1950s would still be relevant and problematic for college students almost 70 years later. In Didion’s essay, “On

Saints are always different from everyday people, thus no one understands them in their lives, only a lot of years after their death. Joan of Arc was a saint like this as well, she was too far ahead of her times and was killed by her fellow men, because they didn’t know what else to do. She was canonized in 1920, after 489 years of her death. In my opinion, she was not only a saint, but meant to be an angel and showed a good example to all of us, how to behave ourselves in the name of honour, honesty, and glory.

The hippie movement is prevalent peace-group that has been in action since the 1960’s. Comprised mostly of middle-class youth, the cultural following promotes peace, anti-war, and free living styles(Britannica). The movement developed in the wake of the Vietnam war, thus giving purpose to the anti-war principles and peace preachings. Although the culture of the hippie movement has widely been viewed as teens who are just looking for an excuse against civic and daily responsibilities, they did have some success.