Close reading Journal #2

In this short story, “Goodbye to All That”, Joan Didion portrays her battle with loneliness and uncertainty while living in New York, through her use of descriptive imagery, negatively connotated word choice, and symbolism. Throughout the entire piece Didion explains the eight years she spent in New York, including the struggles, and the sense of optimism she began with. On the first page she writes, “I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended…the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was” (57). Right from the beginning she sets the mood of optimism through the symbolism of the word “heroine”. Looking at the different meanings of the word, the reader is able to take a much deeper look into the struggle that she faced while in New York. In the context of this sentence she refers to her former self a heroine who was young and excited to take on the world. However, it is not until reading the rest of the passage that the reader can understand the symbolism of the word heroine as it relates to the other meaning of the word. To Didion, New York was like a drug. When she first began it made her feel euphoric, but as time went on the effects started to wear on her just as a drug such as heroine would.

Didion continues to explain her struggles when she compares life in New York to life at a fair. She says, “it is distinctly possible to stay too long at the fair…Everything that was said to me I seemed to have heard before, and I could no longer listen” (60-61). For her this was a when she shifts over to explaining her downfall. She does this by putting a image into the readers head. While not everyone can picture exactly what the struggle was like for her, everyone has battled with their own struggles and can relate when Didion uses such strong imagery. She continues with her heavy language choices when she says, “I had never before understood what ‘despair’ meant, and I am not sure that I understand now, but I understood that year” (61). Diving deep into the meaning of despair at the end of her piece leaves the reader with a feeling of uneasiness. The same type of uneasiness that forced Didion to finally move out of New York and start her new life in Los Angeles.