Cannot Go Home

1037 Words5 Pages
Derick English 1101 Who Says You Cannot Go Home Joan Didion’s “ On Going Home” she uses symbolism throughout the story to describe how long it has been since she has been home. The setting is in two places Central Valley and Los Angeles, California. These two places both have meaning to the woman in the story and she is torn between them. In reading the biography of Joan Didion there are similarities between the woman in “ On Going Home” and herself. Her father was in the Army so they moved frequently so she would have different perspectives of California. The reader begins to realize that the story is about the struggles of the author and her life. Joan Didion writes in her story “ Why I Write” states, “I write in order to find out who I am and what I fear,” she begins the essay, “ and she spares no suspicion about what is beneath any story, retains few illusions about how the world has changed since she was the child of a family of pioneers and certain things- home, family, tradition, and reward for a life well lived- could be relied on” “On Going Home,” indicates that Didion grew up in a home in California that is steeped in tradition and family memories. She walks through her home touching family pictures and dishes that all bring back family memories. Her husband does not appreciate the things in her family that collect dust because those items have been in the family for a long time. He does not understand the tradition of passing down those stories and memories to his daughter as the daughter in “ On Going Home” has had those memories passed on to her. Her life with her husband is only about their future with their daughter and their new life together in the modern city of Los Angeles. In her birthday wishes to her one-year-old daughter she shows that she wants to pass on her family memories to her “ I would like to promise her that she will
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