Who Is Joan Didion On Going Home

In the essay, “On Going Home”, by Joan Didion, the narrator writes about the place where she currently lives, and the place that she considers to be her home. The narrator reveals that she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and baby, but what she considers home is where her family lives in the Central Valley of California. She writes about her husband and family having different ways of living, while also expressing her concern of not being able to give her daughter the same since of home that she had growing up as a child. The author uses a pattern of repeating the word home throughout the entire essay, and also gives off a sense of negativity towards Los Angeles and her husband. For example, Didion writes, “I come to dread my husband’s

The narrator in the essay, “On Going Home”, associates talking with her family about people they know who have been committed to mental hospitals, people they know who have been booked on drunk driving charges, and property, with being home. While she does express that this is what she and her family enjoy talking about, she also writes that her husband does not understand these conversations. “ My brother does not understand my husband’s inability to perceive the advantage in the rather common real estate transaction known as “sale-leaseback,” and my husband in turn does not understand why so many of the people he hears about in my father’s house have recently been committed to mental hospitals or recently booked on drunk driving charges” (Didion 165). The narrator also mentions her husband being uneasy in her parents’ home because she converts to their ways, which are not his own. These examples suggest that she and her husband have different ways in which they socially interact in their