Style is the writer’s personal way of using language to create his reality. A writer’s tone establishes his attitude toward the subject or toward the reader. Joan Didion style and tone communicate her frustration and anguish during a painful and disappointing time in her youth. She skillfully leads the reader to sympathize with her through her writing style and tone.
Didion’s style relies heavily on casual reference or allusion. She uses references to Raskolnikov, a character in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and the Stanford -Binet scale, an intelligence quotient test. She also mentions Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara who are (who are they???). She makes reference to a having an encounter with a vampire, without a crucifix, she creates the allusion that she feels hopeless. Didion considers that she
Through specific, intense wording, one can discover the author’s tone. Didion’s tone changes from bitter anger and disappointment to acceptance and realization of her own self-respect. She mentions the “dry season” and “large letters” across the two pages. One would not write in large print unless trying to communicate strong language or something that would be noticed by many. She claims that she was “stripped” of the delusion that one likes oneself and, furthermore, a mind on the outs should have “made painstaking record of its every tremor”. The images of “stripped” and “tremors” are not pleasant ones; therefore, one can assume that she is not happy with her circumstances and particularly bitter. She later goes on to express sorrow for her situation that “nonetheless marked the end of
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