Joan Didion Blue Night Analysis

“‘What greater grief can there be for mortals than to see their children dead (Didion 13).’” Joan Didion utilizes this quote from Euripedes in her memoir Blue Nights which addresses the death of her daughter, Quintana , and it reminds that reader that losing a child is considered one of the hardest things a person could ever go through. For Didion this loss was only made more crippling because of it’s close proximity to the death of her husband, which occurred less than two years earlier. Within the pages of the memoir, Didion works on coming to terms with the tragic and young death of her daughter whilst also trying to understand the imperfect relationship that she had with her daughter while she was still alive. In this way, Joan Didion’s memoir functions as not only a beautiful piece of nonfiction which delivers pristine prose and explanations of grief, but it also serves a function for Didion as it helps her work through the loss of her daughter as well as seam of the regret that remains. In addition to this, Didion deals with her unfamiliar life that she is must embark on following the death of both her husband and daughter compounded with the affect the growing older has over her emotional and physical …show more content…
Didion is well known for her impeccable diction and prestige flow, and this memoir delivers exactly that, while remaining intensely personal. Didion manages to address the rocky relationship that she had with her daughter in light of her tragic death. This is a task that many authors would find too daunting to achieve, but Didion does it in a way that is both beautiful to read and maintains sometimes heartbreaking emotional truth. As a result of all this, Blue Nights fits perfectly within the genre of literary fiction. Memoir such as this can often be a difficult understanding for the author, but Didion uses the experience in order to better make sense of the past and