Going Home Essay

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According to Joan Didion's essay "On Going Home", continuing changes in life makes it almost impossible to remove memories of one's past. Especially when one has been away from a previous home, which that person was raised, then return to that same home a number of years later. In a home which family and friends shared memories of events, news, gossip and situations, whether it be bad or good. Old artifacts and various family heirlooms in the home that stimulates a memory of those old times when used. Surrounding areas of that old home are remembered just as well also. Being in a new home makes the old memories even more missed. These may be the strongest influences in why memories are kept and remembered. Joan Didion begins her story by illustrating what "home" is to her(p. 134). She describes how her home now is not the place where her husband and daughter live, but in the Central Valley of California with her family. With this introduction, one can sense that she is troubled by the differences between the two. Joan Didion goes on to reveal that her husband is "uneasy" in her family's home(p. 134). He says that she becomes "difficult, oblique, deliberately, inarticulate," which is nothing like the way her husband is(p. 134). This allows the reader to see a side of Joan's husband, obviously he doesn't want to be around people who change his wife into a person that he does not know, but to not even go to his daughter's birthday demonstrates that he is perhaps a difficult person himself. Joan's home-life is confusing with her family. She says that it is "dusty" and full of "mementos" from her life, which her husband holds no value to(p.134). Living in a dusty house symbolically shows that their lifestyle needs work, and that they both do not pay attention to the minute details. If little problems come up in their lives, they will block them out of their
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