Joan Didion Holy Water

There are many potential points of interest in analyzing Joan Didion’s essay, “Holy Water” and the prologue to N. Scott Momaday’s book The Way to Rainy Mountain. The two pieces of writing are significantly dissimilar indeed, and therefore lend themselves more readily to contrast rather than comparison. Upon further investigation, I came to the conclusions that as different as they were in terms of writing style and use of rhetotical devices, both of the writers’ styles were effective. “Holy Water” begins with a statement by Joan Didion about her own, almost obsessive reverence for water. She mentions her interest in the movement and location of water at any given time, something that is generally only known (with any accuracy) by one of the …show more content…
It can get complicated, but as Didion herself says, “to get a general picture it is necessary only to remember that Los Angeles moves some of it, San Fransisco moves some of it, the Bureau of Reclamation's Central Valley Project moves some of it and the California State Water Project moves most of the rest of it [...]” (Didion 112). She goes on to detail not only how these systems are managed based on supply and demand, but also the importance of their function. These systems are now completely essential to the way of life that has been arifitially manufactured all across southern California. In such an arid climate, the manipulation of water is tantamount to controlling whether or not life can be sustained in that area. She talks of people having to brick up their swimming pools, and the sort of smug attitude people in water-rich parts of the country had (and continue to have) about such things. This attitude comes from the misapprehension that pools are …show more content…
She describes her own anecdote illistrating the direct effect of releasing, or failing to release, water, as a parable (Didion 114). She also describes the last stanza of a poem she keeps in her kitchen a having for her, “the power of a prayer” (Didion 116). Her intentional use of this language suggests certain connotations to her readers. She also re-emphasizes the role of control as a theme in her last paragraph by repeatedly stating her own desire to actually be the one in control. She repeats the phrase, “I wanted” no less than five times before concluding, “I wanted to be the one, that day, who was shining the olives, filling the gardens, and flooding the daylong valleys like the Nile. I want it still,” (Didion 116). By breaking her patern of “I wanted” with her use of the present tense, “I want it still,” serves to emphasize how strong her desire is, and that it has roots going back to her first visit to the California State Water Project Operations Control