Analysis: The Year Of Magical Thinking

The Year of Magical Thinking Essay In the memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion narrates her personal struggle of coping the realization of John being dead and will never resurrect to reunite with Joan. Joan exerts many sorrowful expressions as medical information and the vortex effects instill a sense of anticipation that John will soon come back. Consequently, Didion’s hopefulness opaques her true identity as she still associates herself as a married woman, when in reality, she needs to move on from John to reestablish her extroverted personality to the world once again. On the contrary, Didion comes to a consensus that John’s death was inevitable, Joan starts to ponder about her future with the exclusion of John. With Joan grieving

She says “I reasoned that an autopsy could show that what had gone wrong wrong was something simple” (Didion 37). Didion’s request for an autopsy, a thorough examination of a corpse is unnecessary when she witnesses John choking and later falling to the ground. Her beginning phrases such as “You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends” (Didion 3) questions her reasoning for the demand of an autopsy when she expresses John’s death as a distraught and impactful event for her. The autopsy implies that Didion cannot deal with reality; Didion tries to resort to alternative facts to escape the reality that John’s death occurred instantaneously rather than being predictable. Furthermore, grief makes Didion to hallucinate and believe in idiosyncratic beliefs such as the resurrection of John. She says, “I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return” (Didion 37). Her situation alludes to a similar situation where Didion and siblings had to give away their father’s clothes when he passed. This action portrayed a sense of moving on and enabled for Didion’s mother to become a widow. The reason why donating John’s personal item startles and frightens Didion because it signalizes that John will never come back and Joan has to reevaluate her identity of being a