Analysis Of Year Of Magical Thinking: Syntax And Synthesis

Year of Magical Thinking: Syntax and Synthesis
Syntax:
Joan Didion uses many syntax devices to emphasize the important emotions or tones she is trying to create. One device that she uses throughout the book is parenthetical aside. On page 5 and several other places she writes “And then—gone” (Didion 5). One of the struggles Didion faces is the fact that her husband is actually gone and how it was so unexpected. The parenthesis aside created the dramatic effect showing how everything was as expected, and before she realized, he was gone. The hyphen makes the “gone” the main focus of the simple sentence. In Didion’s style, she constantly shifts her story, focus, tone and syntax portraying to the audience how her mind cannot stay in one place and how none of the evidence or stories she reads satisfies her. An example of shift in syntax she uses is on page 12 “ “V-fibbing,” John’s cardiologist said the next morning when he called from Nantucket. “They would have said ‘V-fibbing.’ V for ventricular.”… Ventricular did. Maybe ventricular was the given. I remember trying to straighten out in
Another passage from Dr. Volkan states “ Persons under the shock of genuine affliction are not only upset mentally but all unbalanced physically … At such a time, to some people companionship is a comfort, others shrink from their dearest friends” (Didion 57). This is also an important synthesis the portray another stage of her grieving. Didion did not turn to another person to express her emotions, but instead shrunk away from telling the people closest to her and worked through the grief on her own. And one of the reason the passages from Dr. Volkan bothered her so much was because they were very accurate and instead of going to the people close to her to work through her grief, she turns to obsessing over the autopsy, reading several different articles and writing the