Esmeralda Ocana

3
rd
period
Author, Joan Didion, in her dramatic yet logical essay On Self-Respect defines self-
respect as something that one can only benefit from because one learns to love oneself and then
the opinions of others no longer matter by comparing life with and without self-respect, using
herself and other films/books as examples in order to reveal the true meaning of self-respect for
those who lack it.
Joan Didion like many people has struggled with not having a sense of who she was and
so she was lost in life. She encountered losing her innocence when she was not accepted into
Phi Beta Kappa (Didion 215). She thought that she had the chance to get in even though she
knew she didnt have the grades for it and so when she was denied, she no longer knew who she
was. Giving personal experience on things that her audience struggles with gives her credibility
because her argument is about the importance of having self-respect and so if at some point in
life she didnt have that, she gains the trust of her audience. By opening her essay with the event
of her not having self-respect, she also makes her audience feel like theyre not being attacked
but more so being pushed to accepting the fact that they need self-respect so that they can live
their lives, loving themselves, as one should always do. This helps define self-respect because if
her audience does not realize that without self-respect they will end up where Joan Didion once
was, lost. However, with the acceptance of not having self-respect opens up the doors to having
that self-respect, and with it they will no longer live with being lost.
Furthermore, she creates a sense of urgency with her choice of diction by choosing words
such as never when she used history from 1846 from the Indians instead of sometimes or
most of the time because this makes the situation feel more serious. If the matter is more
serious, then her audience will feel that they must do something about the situation or they will
continue to live their lives suffering without all the benefits of self-respect which are things that
one should already have.
Joan Didion defines self-respect as more than just the dictionary.com definition, she
defines it as clarity with oneself and if one does not have it, one is basically lost without it until
one gains it. She uses several techniques such as building her credibility and strong choice of
diction to push people to have self-respect.


Works Cited Page
Didion, Joan. On Self-Respect. Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990. N. pag. Print.