Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Reading Response: Goodbye to All That

I think Joan Didion does a great job of capturing the readers early on and bringing her experience to life. She crafts a story that is easy to relate to since many people have lived through similar experiences and have dealt with similar issues in the past. She starts out by describing her arrival at New York, the scenes, the atmosphere, and some of the difficulties that she faced. After falling ill shortly after moving to New York, she doesn't even visit a doctor because she doesn't know any. As the essay progresses, despite a rocky start, it becomes very clear that Joan loves New York not because of her comfortable life, but rather because of her newly gained independence. When she is low on cash, she refuses to ask her father for financial aid, demonstrating her desire to be self-sufficient. She also mentions that living seemed like a "game" to her with arbitrary but quite inflexible rules.
Ultimately, I discerned from Didion's essay that when you are young, your perception of a situation can differ greatly from when you retrospectively revisit that same situation. While Joan was younger, she was mesmerized by the glamour and romanticism of New York, but when she looks back at her past experience,her perception changes dramatically. From an outside perspective, she can have a better grasp of the objective facts of her life.

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