Read this excerpt from "Goodbye to All That" by Joan Didion.
We stayed ten days, and then we took an afternoon flight back to Los Angeles, and on the way home from the airport that night I could see the moon on the Pacific and smell jasmine all around and we both knew that there was no longer any point in keeping the apartment we still kept in New York.
Which statement best explains how the imagery in the excerpt affects the meaning of the text?
answer
It captures the beauty and serenity of life in Los Angeles, suggesting why Didion feels more content living there than she did in New York.
question
Read this excerpt from "Goodbye to All That" by Joan Didion.
Part of what I want to tell you is what it is like to be young in New York, how six months can become eight years with the deceptive ease of a film dissolve, for that is how those years appear to me now, in a long sequence of sentimental dissolves and old-fashioned trick shots—the Seagram Building fountains dissolve into snowflakes, I enter a revolving door at twenty and come out a good deal older, and on a different street.
How does Joan Didion's extended metaphor of comparing her time in New York to a movie affect the meaning of this excerpt?
answer
It helps establish the idea that Didion's experiences in New York feel somewhat surreal to her now, like those of a character in a movie. Explanation: Joan Didion's extended metaphor of comparing her time in New York to a movie affects the meaning of this excerpt by emphasizing the fast pace of life in the city and how quickly time can pass. The metaphor also suggests that, like a movie, her time in New York was full of both happy and sad moments that she will never forget.
question
Read this excerpt from "Goodbye to All That" by Joan Didion.
[New York City] was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself. To think of "living" there was to reduce the miraculous to the mundane; one does not "live" at Xanadu.
Which statement best explains the impact that the allusion to Xanadu has on the meaning of the text?
answer
The allusion helps stress the notion that New York City was, to Didion, a wondrous, fantastical, or mythical place for so long that encountering its everyday, ordinary, or humdrum realities was disappointing.
question
Near the end of "Goodbye to All That," Joan Didion mentions that she got married. She describes the decision as "a very good thing to do but badly timed."
Which evidence from the text emphasizes the fact that her husband understands her and helps her?
answer
He suggests they leave New York. Explanation: The evidence from the text that emphasizes the fact that her husband understands her and helps her is when she says For the first time in years I felt safe.""
question
Part A
What is one theme in Joan Didion's "Goodbye to All That"?
Part B
How does Didion develop the theme in Part A throughout her essay?
answer
She describes how excited she was to live in New York when she first arrived and how happy she felt in the city as a young woman. Explanation: Didion begins her essay by discussing how she has never been a particularly nostalgic person, and how she generally does not dwell on the past. However, she goes on to say that there are certain things that she cannot help but remember vividly, such as the day her daughter was born. She then goes on to discuss how she has begun to notice that her memory is beginning to fail her, and she is forgetting things that she used to be able to remember easily. This is causing her to feel a sense of loss, and she is struggling to come to terms with it.Throughout the essay, Didion slowly develops the theme of aging and loss. She begins by discussing how she is losing her memory, and how this is causing her to feel a sense of loss. She then goes on to discuss how she is losing her sense of self, and how she is struggling to come to terms with this. Ultimately, she concludes that aging is a process of loss, and that it is something that we all must come to terms with in our own way.
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