CPT Outline for
Essay on The Year of Magical Thinking
Introduction
l "Fear
is at the root of all forms of exclusion, just as trust is at the root of all
forms of inclusion" (Vanier 71).
l Joan
Didion's memoir, The Year of Magical
Thinking
l In
the Becoming Human, Jean Vanier
states: "Fear is at the root of all forms of exclusion, just as trust is
at the root of all forms of inclusion" (71).
l He
is recognizing that fear drives people to exclude others, and that people need
to get rid of the fear and accept their situation to become inclusive. The Year of Magical Thinking exmines
Joan Didion's life in the year following the death of her husband, writer John
Gregory Dunne. The death of Dunne suddenly comes, and afterward, Didion realizes
that she cannot accept the loss of her husband even though she prepares his
funeral and starts to make the notes about her feelings. She keeps trying to
remember the memories with Dunne and she begins to have "magical
thinking." For example, she believes that her husband will need the shoes
when he comes back home or her wish will bring him back. A year after Dunne's
death, their shared memories are decreasingly at the centre of her every day. The
truth of the autopsy and the progression of time allows her to get rid of the
fear of accepting the loss of her husband. As Jean Vanier expresses in his
quote, she now becomes inclusive of it.
l The
death of Didion's husband leads her to exclusion due to her unwillingness to
accept the loss of her husband, however, as time passes, she moves past her
grief when she accepts the loss of her husband and comes back to the real life
to become inclusive.
Body Paragraph
One
l Didion's
exclusion begins when her husband suddenly dies on an ordinary night and she
realizes that she does not accept the loss of her husband, despite preparing for
his funeral.
l In
the late December before Christmas, Joan Didion and her husband, John Gregory
Dunne, go to the hospital to see their only daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne.
Quintana is hospitalized with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then
complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed in the
intensive care unit. Before long they arrive home, while her husband is sitting
down to dinner, he suddenly dies due to heart attack. He dies shortly after he
arrives at the hospital. For 40 years, Didion and Dunne share their lives and
work. Even though she prepares the funeral of her husband, she does not accept
the death of her husband. She tries, but the grief is not like what she
expected it to be. When she is consumed by memories they lived in Los Angeles,
she realizes that she enters a state of temporary derangement.
l
"We are all
so frightened of losing what is important for us … We are frightened of
change" (Vanier 73).
l "Life
changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as
you know it ends. The question of self-pity" (Didion 3).
l "(A)t
approximately nine o’clock on the evening of December 30, 2003, my husband,
John Gregory Dunne, appeared to (or did) experience, at the table where he and
I had just sat down to dinner in the living room of our apartment in New York,
a sudden massive coronary event that caused his death" (Didion 6-7).
l "I
have no memory of sirens. I have no memory of traffic. When we arrived at the
emergency entrance to the hospital the gurney was already disappearing into the
building" (Didion 13).
l "I
remember thinking that I needed to discuss this with John. There was nothing I
did not discuss with John. Because we were both writers and both worked at home
our days were filled with the sound of each other's voice" (Didion 16).
l "Grief,
when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be ... Grief is different. Grief has
no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken
the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life" (Didion
26).
l In
brief, while her husband is sitting down to dinner, he suddenly dies due to
heart attack. Even though she prepares the funeral of her husband, she does not
accept the death of her husband which represents the beginning of her denial—exclusion—of
her husband's death.
Body Paragraph
Two
l Subsequently,
Didion pushes herself further into exclusion due to her "magical thinking."
l She
understands her husband's death with her head, but could not understand with
her heart. She starts to believe that her wish will bring her husband back to
her, which represents the beginning of her year of "magical
thinking." This results in her not being able to give away her husband's
shoes since she believes that he will need them when he returns. Even thought she
arranges for the autopsy, cremation, and the placement of his ashes, she does
not accept the death of her husband with her heart. Several weeks later, Didion
avoids to look at the photographs of her marriage that hang in the hallway.
When her daughter Quintana wakes from her coma, and Didion tells her about his
father's death. Shortly after, Didion suddenly realizes that she faces the
possibility of losing her daughter right after the death of her husband. She
must believe Quintana will get better because good events are bound to be
followed by bad events. She decides to go to the trip with Quintana as the
starting point of her new life.
l
"To be open
is an enormously risky enterprise … you risk the chaos of loneliness"
(Vanier 79).
l "After
that first night I would not be alone for weeks … but I needed that first night
to be alone. I needed to be alone so that he could come back. This was the
beginning of my year of magical thinking" (Didion 33).
l "I
was thinking as small children think, as if my thoughts or wishes had the power
to reverse the narrative, change the outcome. In my case this disordered
thinking had been covert, noticed I think by no one else, hidden even from me,
but it had been, in retrospect, both urgent and constant" (Didion 35).
l "People
who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to
those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face
and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability,
nakedness, openness ... These people who have lost someone look naked because they
think themselves invisible" (Didion 74).
l "You
will have by now divined that the “hard sweet wisdom” in the last two lines of
“Rose Aylmer” was lost on me. I wanted more than a night of memories and sighs.
I wanted to scream. I wanted him back" (Didion 75).
l Didion
states her first year after the loss of her husband as her year of magical
thinking, such as her wish will bring him back to her. Now, she decides to go
to the trip with Quintana to get out of grief, but she fails and the grief becomes
worse.
Body Paragraph Three
l Moreover,
she is losing her mind due to the mourning, but she moves one step forward to
inclusion when she tries to get rid of grief by joining the convention and reading
the autopsy.
l Her
grief starts to turn into mourning. At the end of 2004, Didion agrees to participate
in the convention for the New York Review of Books because she believes that it
would help get her back to a normal life. However, it reminds her of the
memories with her husband again. Sometime after he dies, she speaks to him as
if he were there, but she knows that, as a writer, imagining their conversation
comes naturally to her. Since he dies, Didion writes the notes about her
feeling as a writer. Now, she starts to write the book base on her notes in
October 4, 2004. She reads the autopsy report and she realizes that nobody
could prevent her husband's death.
l
"To lost
the "known" and to move on to the "unknown" can mean a
terrible loss for us. To live such loss one needs a great deal of inner
strength" (Vanier 80).
l "That
I was only now beginning the process of mourning did not occur to me. Until now
I had been able only to grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened.
Mourning, the act of dealing with grief, required attention" (Didion 143).
l "The
voice on my answering machine is still John’s. The fact that it was his in the
first place was arbitrary, having to do with who was around on the day the
answering machine last needed programming, but if I needed to retape it now I
would do so with a sense of betrayal" (Didion 153).
l "Grief
turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we
know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few
days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death … We might expect
that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to
be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to
return and need his shoes" (Didion 188).
l "Only
after I read the autopsy report did I begin to believe what I had been
repeatedly told: nothing he or I had done or not done had either caused or
could have prevented his death" (Didion 206).
l As
was previously stated, her grief changes into mourning and she realizes that
she is becoming crazy. She tries to live a normal life by joining the
convention, however, it makes her worse. After she reads the autopsy report,
she accepts that no one is responsible for her husband's death.
Body Paragraph Four
l Finally,
Didion accepts the loss of her husband about a year after the death of her
husband, when their shared memories are decreasingly the center of her every
day, she gets rid of the fear of accepting her loss of Dunne's death as time
passes.
l About
a year has passed since Dunne dies and she buys new Christmas lights to replace
the ones that are not working since last year, and they serve as a symbol of
her faith in the future. Soon, she realizes that her memory of this day a year
ago is a memory that is not with her husband. He is dead. As time passes,
Didion realizes that her memories with him are slowly fading. She worries that
her memories of their life together will fade, and she feels betrayal.
l
"How easy
it is to fall into the illusion of a beautiful world when we have lost trust in
our capacity to make of our broken world a place that can become more
beautiful" (Vanier 81).
l "I
realized today for the first time that my memory of this day a year ago is a
memory that does not involve John. This day a year ago was December 31, 2003.
John did not see this day a year ago. John was dead" (Didion 225).
l "In
fact the apprehension that our life together will decreasingly be the center of
my every day seemed today on Lexington Avenue so distinct a betrayal that I
lost all sense of oncoming traffic" (Didion 226).
l As
time passes, her memories with her husband - Dunne - are slowly fading out and
fear of losing memories also disappeared. Eventually, she accepts the death of
her husband and becomes inclusive with it.
Conclusion
l Didion
does not accept her husband's death, which leads her to exclusion due to the
fear of becoming lonely. However, time allows her to get rid of the grief and
to accept the death of her husband, also makes her to become inclusive.
l In
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' 1969 book “On Death and Dying,” there are five stages of
loss and grief. First: "Denial and Isolation," second:
"Anger," third: "Bargaining," fourth:
"Depression," fifth: "Acceptance." Didion does not accept the
loss of her husband even though she prepares for funeral and starts to the
magical thinking, such as her wish will bring her husband back. She also calms
herself down to make the notes about her feelings. Then, Didion tries to think that
good events are bound to be followed by bad events, therefore, this will make
her daughter getting better. However, she is becoming crazy because grief
changes into mourning. Eventually, after she reads the autopsy, she accepts her
husband's death. As time passes, her memories with her husband slowly fade out
and fear of becoming alone also disappear. As Jean Vanier's statements say, her
mind, or maybe heart, moves from exclusion to inclusion since she faces her
fear and accepts the loss of her husband. Everybody pretends not to accept
fearful things and excludes them. Therefore, people need to open up their heart
to get rid of their fear and accept them.
Work Cited
Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking. 1st ed.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Print.
Print.
Vanier, Jean. "From
Exclusion to Inclusion: A Path of Healing." Becoming Human.
Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2008. 69-103. Print.
Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2008. 69-103. Print.
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