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Joan Didion On Going Home Analysis

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Analysis Joan Didion essay: On Going Home
In ‘On Going Home’, the motivation of Joan Didion is her frustration with the city life of Los Angeles and its comparison with the ‘home life’ she had in Central Valley of California. The particular occurrence which intrigued her to write her thoughts is her visit to ‘home’ and ‘family’ at her daughters’ first birthday. The motivation to write the essay resides in her personal conflict as she observes her strong sense of belonging to her family values and the meaninglessness of these values in her current life with her husband. The visit to home is a reminder of how strongly she is rooted in those values and she is exasperated at the thought that she would not be able to transfer that sense of belongingness to her daughter. Eagerness of family values and the imminent threat of her daughter being unaware of the real values appear saddening.
The reader or the audience of the ‘On Going Home’ are the generations of people born before the fragmentation of World War II. As the essay is written in …show more content…

The author particularly appears to be a person growing up in the first half of 20th century when the family values, ancestral connections, and the intimate norms were the things to be preserved. The author connects with her audience on the value and preciousness of the ‘family’ and ‘home’. She writes the essay right in the center of the setting that she is describing and possess a strong sense of connection with her surroundings. She also writes as a mother of the young daughter who wants to transmit the love and knowledge of family values to her daughter, but she knows that these values have become oblique and her daughter would never understand their true

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