Rimsha Asher

Ms. Pasche
AP Language and Composition, 3
rd
Pd.
April 14
th
, 2014
Rhetorical Analysis: On Self-Respect
In her candid and thoughtful essay On Self-Respect, Joan
Didion uses her own story and specific allusions to uncover the route to
achieving self-respect in order to teach us that self-respect means we
need to accept our faults to be able to love ourselves.
In the opening paragraphs of her essay, Joan Didion introduces
her word through a flashback of her own story. She opens with
innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes
oneself, to lead into her story about how she had not been elected to
Phi Beta Kappa failure (Didion 1). She establishes credibility by
connecting her word to herself to convey to her readers that she is like
them; she explains how she had the false notion that she is perfect and
self-respectful. Because her audience is anyone who is lost, is finding
themself, lacks self-respect, she appeals to their emotions through her
own story.
Throughout her essay, Didion utilizes allusions to notorious
characters/figures who fall into the definition of her word. As she
references a famous piece of literature when mentioning it is difficult
in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering
Heights with ones head in a Food Fair bag, she portrays what it
means to have self-respect (Didion 2). She references a character
known to be high-spirited, so her readers would understand that one
cannot lie to oneself because we all have imperfections, implying how
Cathy would never stick her head in the bag to escape her emotions.
Moreover, she claims we all would want to be the Helen Keller to
anyones Anne Sullivan to convey how we try to constantly,
continuously, please others (Didion 2). In order to insure that her
audience understands that one needs to see themself for who they are,
she compares the roles of famous characters/figures to what it means to
have self-respect, appealing to her audiences logic and emotions
through said allusionsthe readers know the famous comparisons and
place themselves in the situation/stories.
Furthermore, Didion juxtaposes the existence of her word and its
opposite needing to be acknowledged. Didion states, To do without
self-respect is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable
documentary that details ones failings. If one does not exhibit respect
for their person, their own feelings and decisions, their mistakes haunt
them, for they are ashamed rather than confident of their actions. To
emphasize this point, Didion elaborates, people with self-respect have
the courage of their mistakes and display characterthe willingness
to accept ones own life (Didion 2). She specifies to her readers that in
order to have self-respect, one must posses the courage to take
responsibility for ones own faults and actions. Through her
juxtaposition, Didion strengthens her definition, teaching her audience
that one needs to understand what it means to lack self-respect before
acquiring it.
All in all, Didion uses a specific form to build up her argument of
how to achieve self-respect. Didion starts her essay by giving insight to
her own story, provides definitions and comparisons throughout,
acknowledges that you need to be devoid of self-respect before obtaining
it, and closes with how loving oneself without caring of others opinions
equates to respecting oneself. She uses this arrangement to aid her
intention of alluring in her readers through her process of exposing the
path to self-respect, in order to define her word, self-respect, as an
acceptance of our faults on the road to loving ourselves.





Works Cited


Didion, Joan. On Self-Respect. Vogue, 1961: 1-4. Print.