On Self Respect

We all worry about the degree to which we respect ourselves, and our worst judgement is how little self-respect someone has. But defining self-respect is quite difficult. In On Self-Respect, Joan Didion explains what the definition of self-respect is and how it has to do with how we feel about ourselves, and not how others see us. By using a range of imagery, allusions, and diction, Didion shows us how difficult it is to develop and achieve self-respect.

Joan Didion begins the passage by reflecting on her struggles on defining what self-respect was. In the second paragraph, Didion reflects on how she was not elected to be in the sorority, Phi Beta Kappa, knowing she did not have the grades for it, realizing how the “passive virtues” that she relied on as a young child did not work for her as an adult. She explains disappointing incidents that keep someone who lacks self-respect awake at night. “There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one.” Didion closes with a situation of what can happen when lacking self-respect reaches incurable levels: ‘We no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something…Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question.” By disclosing her personal experiences and situations Didion is showing her vulnerability, forming her status as someone who had struggled and thought about her own level of self-respect.

Because self-respect is a rather elusive abstract concept, and while Didion eventually describes its attributes, she defines self-respect by revealing what it is not. She labels her above-quoted diary passage as “a