Tom, Vannida
Writing 10, 3:30 p.m.
September 24, 2013
Goodbye to All That by Joan Didion
Paragraph Breakdowns
Paragraph 1:
Didion begins the first paragraph with a simple observation. Her following sentence is how she
had come to understand that observation and becomes more personal. She then states another
observation. In her last sentence she uses double narrative, which is used many times throughout
her piece, to present another observation. In this first paragraph, she hints that she will be taking
her readers through time, and this piece will be a short history of her life.
Didion’s tone in the first paragraph is nostalgic; she remembers her time in New York and the
person she used to be. She gets more and more personal as the paragraph continues; giving
readers a sense of closeness and understanding of the self she is creating on the page. She states
that she lost her optimism, which brings in the readers to wonder why and how she had changed
from the person she was to the person she is now.
Paragraph 2:
In this paragraph, Didion continues to use double narrative. The author tells her story by
describing her surroundings. By using descriptive language she is able to pull in the readers to
where she was when she was twenty years old, also making them feel nostalgic.
Paragraph 3:
In this paragraph, she begins by directly talking to the readers. By doing this, she is connecting
more to the reader. Also in this paragraph, she presents the main purpose of her essay, explaining
why she doesn’t live in New York anymore.
Paragraph 4:
Didion begins to introduce her story, and uses a conversation she had with a friend to present a
lesson or moral that will be evident by the end of her story. The lesson that is presented is that
sooner or later there will be no more “new faces” for her to see in the city. In her last sentence,
she states that it was a while before she understood the moral, hinting that she will find herself in
the same position as friend.
Paragraph 5:
In this paragraph, she talks about her fascination with New York City as a young person just
seeing the city for the first time. Her description of her youthful times brings readers back to
their youthful times and to readers who are at that age can relate to how she felt at that moment.
She states that she still “believed in possibilities”, which insinuates that possibilities are not
present in her life now. She uses the double narrative to separate how she thought in her youth
and how she thinks now, allowing readers to understand the author as two different people: the
person she once was and the person she is now.
Paragraph 6:
Again in this paragraph, she is continuing to describe her past through events. She elaborates
more on her youthful nature. She begins her paragraph with more thoughts from her past, like the
fact that everything felt new to her. She then lists a range of different people she had met,
showing the readers the many “new faces” she had come to meet at that certain point in her life.
Didion ends this paragraph by stating another youthful thought, “I could makes promises to
myself and to other people and there would be all the time in the world to keep them. I could stay
up all night and make mistakes, and none of them would count.” Based on her previous
paragraphs, readers know that when Didion talks about her younger intuition, her present self
disagrees. Readers are now presented with another set of ideas that Didion will counter
throughout her piece.
Paragraph 7:
Didion begins this paragraph by stating that living in New York did not feel real to her at the
time. She then starts to talk about time and how she always extended her stay in New York,
which coincides with her thought from the previous paragraph that she had all the time in the
world. She then explains how she identified with Southerners. She then describes Southerners by
saying that they were on “extended leave” from where they came from and were “temporary
exiles”. Because she identifies with this group, she is talking about herself, giving readers more
insight to how the author perceived and felt about herself.
Paragraph 8:
In this paragraph, Didion explains to the readers why she was so fascinated by New York. She
states that because she was not raised in the East Coast, places and things in New York seemed
surreal. She calls New York an “infinitely romantic notion” and compares it to Xanadu, meaning
that she felt that New York was so out of her league that she could not just simply “live” there.
By putting New York at such a standard, Didion allows her readers to see that she is not just in
love with the city, but has a somewhat unreal idea of what the city is and what it can offer her.
Through her naïve perception of the city, she is hinting to her readers that what she imagined
New York to be is fictitious compared to the New York she will come to know.
Paragraph 9:
Didion begins to talk about how she lived. She mentions that she “lived in other people’s
apartments” and she never owned furniture. Through these statements she is telling her readers
that she was not stable when she lived in New York, and wherever she lived she knew it would
not be permanent. At the end of the paragraph, she says, “I think perhaps none of us was very
serious,” bluntly saying that she didn’t take her life seriously when she was young.
Paragraph 10:
In this paragraph, Didion talks about a “yellow theatrical silk” which she hangs in her bedroom.
She explains that she did not care to hang the curtains correctly so they in turn got ruined. She
uses the golden silk curtains to symbolize her perception of New York. Her perception of New
York was shielded by the metaphorical transparent golden silk, and when that golden silk was
ruined in the thunderstorm, it was only then could she see New York for what it really was. In
her last sentence of the paragraph, she realizes that the things she thought before was wrong and
states them.
Paragraph 11:
In this paragraph, Didion writes in present tense. She uses this paragraph to mention all the
things that remind her of New York, focusing mainly on smell.
Paragraph 12:
Didion, again, begins to write about the past. She focuses on how she would spend her nights,
which was often spent staying up doing nothing.
Paragraph 13:
In this paragraph, she writes about how she would spend her days. In the middle of her
paragraph, she focuses heavily on her job. She lists all the things she likes about her job, and
through this extensive positive description of her job readers are aware that her job was a source
of happiness and satisfaction for her.
Paragraph 14:
This paragraph begins with Didion explaining that she still sees New York as she always had,
but appreciates being alone rather than being around “new faces.” In the last sentence, she says
that at that time she had “all the afternoons in the world”, indicating that her present self doesn’t
have all the afternoons in the world to idly spend doing nothing. This entices readers to wonder
how her life has changed.
Paragraph 15:
Didion focuses on parties in this paragraph, describing all sorts of parties she attended and the
different kinds of people who also attended those parties. At the end of the paragraph, she
mentions again the “new faces” saying that she had stopped believing in them. By saying that, it
is an indication that at this moment she has learned the “moral” of her story which was
mentioned at the beginning of her piece. The last sentence of her paragraph she states the moral
that she had learned, something readers had been looking forward to, “it is distinctly possible to
stay too long at the Fair.”
Paragraph 16:
Beginning with this paragraph, Didion begins to write how she has changed after her realization.
She states her age to be twenty-eight, which is also the age that she mentioned in paragraph 10
where her view of New York is cleared from the transparent shield of optimism and awe of the
city. Also in this paragraph, she describes the city differently with a tone of annoyance that
everything in the city is now repetitive and uninteresting. In this paragraph she lists things that
she can’t stand or feel indifferent about within New York, including the people and different
location in the city.
Paragraph 17:
Didion uses this paragraph to describe her reaction to her self-realization. She explains that she
was depressed and had become distant from people in her life. This paragraph describes Didion’s
lowest and saddest point in her piece.
Paragraph 18:
Didion states that she got married despite conflicts with herself. She then lists things that she was
unable to do because of her depression, including working. Her job was a big part of her life that
gave her stability, happiness, and satisfaction, mentioned in Paragraph 13, and was a source of
her enjoyment of living in New York. By the end of her paragraph she says that her husband
suggested that they left New York, an indication that this would end her depression.
Paragraph 19:
For her concluding paragraph, Didion is talking as herself presently. She says that she was “very
young in New York…and I am not that young anymore.” By saying this, she is also stating that
she is not the same person as she once was which can explain why she left the city and moved to
Los Angeles. In her last sentence, she says, “There were years when I called Los Angeles “the
Coast,” but they seem a long time ago.” The years that Didion is referring to are her youthful
years in New York, a part of her life where she has moved on from and put behind her.