A Rhetorical Analysis Of Oh Morality By Joan Didion

The 1960’s marked a time period known as the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, and protests. Therefore, it is evident that this era was known for its highly political and cultural transformations, especially in literature. One author, known as Joan Didion, wrote an anecdote known as “Oh Morality.” With the use of many rhetorical devices, Didion establishes her opinion on morality. Didion uses lots of syntax to create more emphasis and clarity. Throughout the stories Didion lists, there is one that sparks morality more than the others. In the beginning of her essay, Didion talks about how this guy who was driving back from Las Vegas got into a car accident and died. When his woman found him, she was in shock and started to bleed internally.
Didion included the nurse's stance: “You can’t just leave a body on the highway,” she said. “It’s immoral.” (1) To further explain, the nurse didn’t want the body to go to waste and get eaten by coyotes or something. Furthermore, Didion states that we need to take part in the code we learned as children, which is, for better or for worse, we have to show morality and care in situations. Didion reveals, “You are quite possibly impatient with me by now; I am talking, you want to say, about a “morality” so primitive that it scarcely deserves the name, a code that has as its point only survival, not the attainment of the ideal good.” (2) It is evident that her syntax may be annoying the reader, yet she explains how she feels as though this is super important and that, as humans, we should take part in doing