In her essay "The White Album," Joan Didion describes her attempts to organize, rationalize and understand both life as she perceived it and several sporadic and sometimes disturbing events that occurred during the '60s. Didion recounts her disorientation at the time through memories and anecdotes about her personal life, and explains her psychological processes and analyzes her thoughts and behaviors. At several points throughout her essay she describes an unease or feeling of foreboding in a detached, indifferent tone; she uses the same tone to describe her daily life and national and local events that were part of her environment:
It seems to me now that I was always writing down the license plates of panel trucks, panel trucks circling the block, panel trucks parked across the street, panel trucks idling at the intersection. I put these license numbers in a dressing-table drawer where they could be found by the police when the time came.
That the time would come I never doubted, at least not in the inaccessible places of the mind where I seemed more and more to be living. So many encounters in those years were devoid of any logic save that of the dreamwork. In the big house on Franklin Avenue many people seemed to come and go without relation to what I did. I knew where the sheets and towels were kept but I did not always know who was sleeping in every bed. I had the keys but not the key. I remember taking a 25 mg. Compazine one Easter Sunday and making a large and elaborate lunch for a number of people, many of whom were still around on Monday. I remember walking barefoot all day on the worn hardwood floors of that house and I remember "Do You Wanna Dance" on the record player, "Do You Wanna Dance" and "Visions of Johanna" and a song called "Midnight Confessions." I remember a babysitter telling me that she saw death in my aura. I remember chatting with her about reasons why this might be so, paying her, opening all the French windows and going to sleep in the living room. [19-20]
Questions
1. What is Didion trying to convey through her use of a similar tone in descriptions of both her paranoia about the panel trucks and having guests at the house on Franklin Avenue?
2. What is the significance of the song titles mentioned in the second paragraph? Are the artists, or their images, important?
3. Didion uses the phrase "panel trucks" four times in the first sentence. What effect does this repetition have?
4. Repetition is also utilized in the second paragraph; the words "I remember" appear five times, always beginning a sentence or clause. Is the effect of this repetition different than that of the earlier usage ("panel trucks")?
11 September 2007