1) Didion uses allusions to literature (that we may or may not have read) in order to support or illustrate her points. What effect does this have on the reader? Is it helpful? Is it alienating?
the effects that it has on the reader is larger accepted it makes the reader see how passionate she is about expressing how she feels on the way she thinks about things. The reader can either understand where she is coming from or they can be lost because they can not think past their own life itself. It can be helpful because they can understand how she is feeling and they can relate some way to how they can respond to it. Maybe. it can be alienating because someone can be feeling the same way and they do not know about it and they can misplace themselves beyond the world.
2) List some statements that she clearly makes about having, or not having, self respect. Are these based on assumptions that people would generally agree with? For instance, she uses the example of committing adultery without asking forgiveness to illustrate “courage of their mistakes” and “character”. What do we make of that?
Some statements are I hate careless people it takes two to make an accident. I put my head in a paper bag. Yes people can agree with it because accidents happen sometimes it can be one or two people. But for the purpose that she is in it is definately two people. I think that it can happen if someone ownes up to their mistakes and admit that they did do something wrong. Some people do not own up to what they do and it is not good at all. Just because you did something wrong the world does not hold it against you it take your conscienceness to eat you up inside.
3) She maintains that having self respect is a “discipline,” a “habit of mind”. She says that having self respect is a discipline “that can never be faked but can be developed , trained, coaxed forth”. She also says that disciplines represent values that lie underneath them. How are her statements about self respect as a discipline connected to the idea of building writing skills as a discipline or a habit of mind?
It connects hand in hand. You can be disciplined at both because you have to have the wants to be a well behaved writer and learn from the ways that you do write. And it takes a disciplined person to own up to what they do and the way that they do it.And you wrting skilla build up as the years go by just like self respect. You are not going to respect yourself as a person if you are not well developed in your eyes. Just like a person who loves writing they think that they are not very good until they are complimented on.
