Sample entry for STB

For the tutorial that didn't happen last week, I was going to have us take a close look at the chapter titled "On Going Home." It's a short one, but that doesn't mean it doesn't lend itself to lots of good thinking and discussing.

The photo above is a scan from my own copy of the book, and it's pretty typical of what my pages look like when I do close reading. I say close reading like that because that means more than just reading for content; it's reading for deeper meaning and having a conversation with the text. It takes a lot more time, but it is worth it for the deeper understanding.

So on your summer assignment, I asked you to focus on one rhetorical device (or technique that Didion uses) and how it creates deeper meaning. I didn't mean for these to be super-long entries, per se, and below is an example of my own. For this chapter, the focus was the author's use of detail, so that's what I'm concentrating on.

Quote from page 166:

"There is no final solution for letters of rejection from The Nation and teacups hand-painted in 1900."

Didion has gone back to her family home as an adult - she has a husband and a daughter of her own. But she finds herself sifting through old objects that once belonged to her and not knowing what to do with them anymore. She could have written about going through her "stuff," but she names particular items like a letter of rejection - this makes me think she's been writing for a very long time and wasn't always successful at it, and hand-painted teacups from long before she was even born. What use does she have for these, she has to wonder, but at the same time, how do you throw something like that away? These details make me understand that she feels a connection to her past, but she isn't sure how to define it or what it means to her. Being at her family's home as a grown-up is a bit like being thrown into limbo. I feel this same way when I go through boxes of my mom's stuff - I don't want to throw it out, but I don't need it at all. The past is hard to let go of for everyone.

And hopefully that's not too scary. You need to do 12 of these types of entries. Email me with any questions!