How Does Joan Didion Define Self Respect

What is Self-Respect? Throughout our lives, we have more than likely heard of the noun self-respect. Even though this term is all around us, do we know what it means? In Joan Didion’s essay, “On Self-Respect,” Didion explains the key qualities of how to achieve this matter. Defining this term would be no easy task; however, Didion creates a unique and effective rhetorical choice that the audience appeals to. Every human being has the ability to achieve self-respect. Didion has an uplifting tone that everyone has the opportunity to learn from. As Didion enlightens readers, she uses; personal anecdotes, imagery, and metaphors to portray her thesis.
In order to ultimately define and present her abstract definition of self-respect, Didion must first set the stage for her audience. Therefore, she begins her essay with a concrete example of a personal experience. In the second paragraph, she describes a time during her teenage years when she was not accepted into Phi Beta Kappa. Didion states:
I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the

She compares Julian English in Appointment in Samara to Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby, stating that even though they were both careless, only Baker had self-respect. Even if one does not care for Baker, Didion describes that she has self-respect because she is able to accept her faults. Using this specific metaphor, Didion explains that character is related to self-respect, “Nonetheless, character –[sic] the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life –[sic] is the source from which self-respect springs.” Jordan Baker had character which built on the factor of