This piece starts its structure with an intro comparing and contrasting her past and present life as she arrives at home for her daughter’s first birthday. Following the intro is the body of her writing which describes the experiences she encountered while visiting her family. Lastly, Didion concludes with the realization that the life she would like her daughter to experience would, in the end, not to be possible. In the last paragraph of the reading Didion states, “I would like to give her more. I would like to promise her that she will grow up with a sense of her cousins and of rivers and of her great-grandmother’s teacups, would like to pledge her a picnic on a river with fried chicken and her hair uncombed, would like …show more content…
The use of the phrase, “Paralyzed by the neurotic lassitude engendered by meeting one’s past at every turn…” is one example. Another would be, “ambushes of family life.” She includes syntax by adding simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, fragmented/parallel sentences, and compound-complex sentences. A great amount of vivid imagery was also used throughout the piece. One example includes Didion describing a scene, “the yellow fields and the cottonwoods and the rivers rising and falling and the mountain roads closing when the heavy snow comes in.” Didion was very precise and technical in this piece of