Joan Didion Analysis
The Piece
In Joan Didion’s memoir, she outlines the events of a painfully tragic experience in her life. She takes the reader through her dismal attitudes of embarrassment, uneasiness, and eventual enlightenment. Didion explains how her distorted view on self-respect from her childhood is morphed into life’s reality when she is not accepted into Phi Beta Kappa. Strong comparisons and distinct diction engulfs the reader and leads them through a journey in Didion’s life.
The text begins with Didion scribbling in her diary, presumably in an upset mood judging by the sizeable print she used to create a dramatic effect. “I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.” This dramatic statement immediately hooks the reader, causing them to wonder what horrific event resulted in Didion’s definite state of agitation. A shift occurs as Didion begins to recall, some years later, on her foolish and naive thought process. Didion expresses her chagrin feeling as she claims, “I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect.” In this statement Didion refers to her documentations in her diary as “ashes” signifying the lack of reality they held. Due to Didion’s crooked view on self-respect she is stripped of her ability to pledge in Phi Beta Kappa.
In the following paragraph Didion explains that it was quite obvious why she did not get elected into Phi Beta Kappa. She was not the “academic Raskolnikov” she had dreamt herself to be; she simply did not have the grades. But this still left her unsettled. Although not getting into Phi Beta Kappa was hardly a tragedy, it was still the end of something for Didion and she states “The day I did not get into Phi Beta Kappa nonetheless marked the end of something and innocence may well be the word for it.” Didion then comes to numerous realizations due to the false realities
In Joan Didion’s memoir, she outlines the events of a painfully tragic experience in her life. She takes the reader through her dismal attitudes of embarrassment, uneasiness, and eventual enlightenment. Didion explains how her distorted view on self-respect from her childhood is morphed into life’s reality when she is not accepted into Phi Beta Kappa. Strong comparisons and distinct diction engulfs the reader and leads them through a journey in Didion’s life.
The text begins with Didion scribbling in her diary, presumably in an upset mood judging by the sizeable print she used to create a dramatic effect. “I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.” This dramatic statement immediately hooks the reader, causing them to wonder what horrific event resulted in Didion’s definite state of agitation. A shift occurs as Didion begins to recall, some years later, on her foolish and naive thought process. Didion expresses her chagrin feeling as she claims, “I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect.” In this statement Didion refers to her documentations in her diary as “ashes” signifying the lack of reality they held. Due to Didion’s crooked view on self-respect she is stripped of her ability to pledge in Phi Beta Kappa.
In the following paragraph Didion explains that it was quite obvious why she did not get elected into Phi Beta Kappa. She was not the “academic Raskolnikov” she had dreamt herself to be; she simply did not have the grades. But this still left her unsettled. Although not getting into Phi Beta Kappa was hardly a tragedy, it was still the end of something for Didion and she states “The day I did not get into Phi Beta Kappa nonetheless marked the end of something and innocence may well be the word for it.” Didion then comes to numerous realizations due to the false realities