Analysis of Joan Didion’s Essay, On Going Home

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While reading Joan Didion’s essay “On Going Home” one may be reminded of a sense of home and family. In this essay Didion recreates the feeling one gets when one visits a place from the past or while reminiscing about fond memories. This memory is marked by the reflective thought about the ability to be able to pass this same sense on to another. Didion’s “On Going Home” is like a flood of warm memories leaving you with a single reflective thought.

The way she uses description in this essay and the flow of events is very similar to the way that memories rush in when one returns to a familiar place from one’s past. To someone that may not of experienced this phenomena the details described may seem to be disconnected and random. However, these details are more like the items in an o...

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