22.On Self Respect

This article written by Joan Didion is about her concept of self-respect and her description of what it takes to have self-respect. She mentioned about the grandparents who had self-respect because they were disciplined and trained. However, this is not the kind of self-respect that she wants. She says that to have self-respect is to potentially to have everything such as the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. If the people do not respect themselves, then they are locked within themselves and incapable of showing love or indifference. She explains that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others and it is only for people who have courage. Without self-respect, the people would be living in a series of lies and the promises and trusts would be broken. The author herself even lost her own innocence due to misplaced self-respect.   

Didion’s used complex language to inform the readers about the importance of having self-respect. This theme of her article is more mature and more suitable for the adults rather than for the teenagers. She used several adjectives to provide a picture for the readers and also to make her arguments stronger. She also used several famous examples such as Napoleon to describe her main concepts. The article is very rich with credible sources for example, when she mentioned about Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby because it is a popular book that most people know and it illustrates the author’s points. She had a strong attention getter because she used rich descriptive adjectives that helped her narrate her stories. However, her essay is very lenghthy and sometimes, hard to understand her main arguments. She also used too many examples and it can be distractive for the readers. She could have cut off some of the stories in the article so that it is not that tiring to read and also keep the readers more interested throughout the essay. Overall, her essay is well written and complex in adjectives that allows the readers to grow in imagination.