Literary Devices
"the sea keeps breaking against the shore, and the land appears to be giving way"
Imagery!
Uses California as a way to symbolize the political division going on in America. She shows a world where political systems are chaotic and unstable. Her expression of America's broad, disconnected geography is used to show how society lacks cohesion.
Political Chaos
Expectation vs. Reality (Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream)
Disillusionment
The plot summary of "On Morality"
What is a commentary onto the values of morality, on which she brings up examples of ancient civilization's customs (like human sacrifice) and questions if morality is used for political or evil gain?
Known as the golden state
California
"The cliffs were crumbling into the sea even as people continued to build houses on them."
Irony!
Didion writes about the mirage of the American dream. A disconnect between the American people and reality. People in America coexist without connection, lacking shared values.
What is Social Fragmentation
Moral judgement is unclear and not universal
Moral Ambiguity
Plot summary of Goodbye to all that
Reflecting on her time in NYC, blending memories with cultural critiques. What was once a dream has now become a discontent memory.
Subset of journalism that uses literary techniques founded by Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe.
What is New Journalism
“The Pacific looked tranquil, almost serene, but the land beneath it was shifting."
Juxtaposition
When writing about people and places, she tends to write from a detached place. Most individuals in her works are socially and psychologically removed or lonely.
Isolation
Writing is becoming self-centered and eventually going to breakdown
Alienation
What is a commentary on the lives of the disgustingly rich during the Gilded age, writing about wives who are stuck in behind a prison with golden bars -- she talks about how the rich destroy the earth too?
Someone who travels because of a military parent
what is a military brat
Metaphor.
Everyone is flawed but everyone thinks themselves or their ideologies are correct. Didion tries to expose the gap between belief and reality
What is Self-Righteousness
On Morality shares how even our definition of morality is dependent on cultures. Life is continuing to become more and more job orientation and "grinding"
Lack of meaning
Plot of After Life
Joan is reflecting on her husband's death; the ordinary-ness of the event; the help others gave her through grief.
What is the day that both Me and Joan Didion were born
December 5