“On Morality”
by Joan Didion
An essay excerpted from
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
-1965
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by W.B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Hieronymus Bosch
Reading Rhetorically
How did charting help you
make sense of Didion’s
challenging argument?
Reading Rhetorically by Charting
• Paragraph 1: Didion describes her physical discomfort to illustrate her intellectual
discomfort with the word “morality”; however, she does introduce her concept
of the “particular.”
• Paragraphs 2-4: Didion exemplifies what she means by the “particular” (157),
providing a current as well as historical cases of primitive moral beliefs/codes
that are taught to us as children.
• Paragraphs 5-6: Didion maintains that it is difficult to move beyond particular
primitive examples of what is good in a place like Death Valley as she describes
how stories travel as well as how their tone is mostly dark and ominous.
• Paragraph 7: Didion asserts that morality is not “manageable”(161) as it is
guided by the individual conscience, which can be good or bad, and again,
provides historical examples to illustrate her point.
• Paragraphs 8-9: Didion concedes the problem with asserting what is right or
wrong (including her own assertion), but claims that we have no way of knowing
what is moral beyond fundamental/primitive social codes and insists that when
we feel that we have a “moral imperative” (163) to push our virtues on others it
is dangerously bad.
Because when we start deceiving ourselves
into thinking not that we want something or
that we need something, not that is is a
pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that
it is a moral imperative that we have it, then
is when we join the fashionable madmen,
and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is
heard in the land, and then is when we are in
bad trouble. And I suspect we already are.
(Didion 163)
What is Didion’s main
argument (thesis, major claim,
key assertion)?
Does she make any ideological
assumptions?
English 120: College Composition & Reading
Instructor: Sydney Brown
ARISTOTLE’S PERSUASIVE APPEALS / RHETORICAL STRATEGIES:
LOGOS, ETHOS, AND PATHOS
Whenever you read an argument, you should begin by asking yourself, “Is this persuasive?” And if so, to whom? There are several ways to appeal to an audience.
Among them are appealing to logos, ethos, and pathos. These appeals are prevalent in almost all arguments.
To Appeal to Logic (logos)
To Appeal with Credibility (ethos)
The author attempts to persuade with his/her character .
To Appeal to Emotions (pathos)
The author attempts to persuade by using
reasoning.
Theoretical, abstract language
Language appropriate to audience and subject
The author attempts to persuade by appealing to
emotions.
Vivid, concrete language
Denotative meanings / reasons
Restrained, sincere, fair minded presentation
Emotionally loaded language
Literal and historical analogies
Informed, intelligent
Connotative meanings
Factual data and statistics
Appropriate level of vocabulary
Emotional examples
Quotations
Correct grammar
Vivid descriptions
Citations from experts and authorities
Shows awareness of complexity of issue
Narratives of emotional events
Informed opinions
Acknowledges other opinions
Emotional tone
Figurative language
Effect
Evokes cognitive and rational response
Example
Effect
Effect
Demonstrates author’s reliability, experience,
competence, and respect for the audience’s ideas and
values through consistent and appropriate use of support
and general accuracy.
Evokes emotional response:
Example
Example
One should not smoke, as the Surgeon
While smoking is a challenging addiction to
General reports that cigarette smoke contains overcome, it is vital to do so.
over 4,800 chemicals, 69 of which are known
to cause cancer.”
Susan never had the opportunity to have that
mother-daughter talk, as when she was twelve,
she lost her mother—a lifelong smoker—to lung
cancer.
Evaluation
To what extent do you find
Joan Didion’s “On Morality”
convincing?