![]() When writing an obituary, many decide to include some biographical details about the person who passed away and offer various information about the deceased. What is an obituary, in relation to the narrative?Īn obituary is a notice of death published in a newspaper. This shows how Didion does not feel comfortable leaving things entirely in others' hands and how the hospital system may demand precisely that. However, her attempts to suggest treatments and oversee her daughter’s care frustrates some hospital workers, whom one supposes are not used or do not appreciate the patient’s family being so involved. As in writing or reporting, Didion knows that knowledge is power. In reading medical literature and memoirs by doctors and hospital administrators, Didion tries to gain an understanding into what is going on around Quintana so that she can involve herself somehow. ![]() How does Didion as a writer interact with nurses and doctors at the hospital? What do these interactions say about Didion, on one hand, and the hospital system, on the other? For someone to whom reading and writing matter so much, this is a very plainly – but forcefully – stated form of love. She does not rely upon him in a directly emotional way, but rather as someone who shares with her in her enterprise of words. Their conversations are what she remembers – and misses – the most even after he has died, his words and his personality seem to chasten and guide her at various points. ![]() When Didion writes of John and what she appreciated in him or misses in him, she does not speak so much about tenderness or love, but more in terms of friendship, a “marriage of minds,” to borrow a phrase from Shakespeare. Where is the place of love in this book, in which the word “love” is hardly ever mentioned? Although Didion is describing very specific and personal events, she connects them to such a range of literature that at once enriches her story and gives it a more universal quality. She not only experiences things and then thinks and writes about them herself, but also reads about the experiences and reflections of others. The many quotations and allusions Didion weaves into her narrative round out the literary personality that she embodies in the book. How do the long quotations from different sources such as medical texts and an etiquette book affect the overall tone and meaning of the book? This at once bookends it as a story and, by emphasizing the precise pace of the progression of events, makes it a very concrete and felt story that can be generalized to almost any person and any time. The book is framed chronologically as the title suggests: it was completed almost exactly a year after John’s death and describes how Didion thought and felt during that year. We can understand Didion’s frequent use of dates, especially important dates such as John’s death on December 30, 2003, as a way to ground her written account in reality and to bring into the account the very time of her writing. Why does Didion include and repeat so many specific dates throughout her book? In many cases, after depicting some destabilizing episode she goes through, she will draw back to understand what has happened or simply stop before it becomes too indulgent. However, Didion maintains a very clear and balanced poise throughout her book, even when she describes herself as being unbalanced. When we think of grief, we usually think of weeping and showy displays of emotions we expect writing of grief to likewise show excessive feelings to the point of inarticulateness. What is distinctive about the tone Didion uses to depict her own grief? What significance does this tone have to the topic of the book?
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