Exercises — Week 28: Week 28 — Personal Essay: Social Commentary (Didion)
2 hands-on tasks. Do them in order; each one feeds the Canvas item it names.
35 min · analysis
1. Didion Method Analysis
- Read Didion's title essay from Slouching Towards Bethlehem or her essay 'On Going Home' (both widely anthologized).
- Write one analytical paragraph: identify the specific, concrete opening scene; trace the moment where Didion expands to cultural observation; locate one example of trenchant or sardonic language; and explain what social or cultural condition Didion uses the personal subject to reveal.
- All analysis must cite specific language from the essay.
Turn in / bring: Analytical paragraph with three labeled examples (opening scene, expansion moment, trenchant or sardonic language) and a sentence identifying the cultural condition diagnosed.
30 min · written
2. Social Commentary Paragraph
- Choose one specific, observable aspect of your own current experience — a behavior in your school, a pattern in your neighborhood, something you encounter regularly.
- Write a paragraph (150–200 words) that opens with close description of the specific thing and then expands to the broader condition it reveals.
- Do not state the broader claim until the final sentence. Use at least one trenchant observation.
- After writing, label the expansion moment — the sentence where you move from particular to cultural.
Turn in / bring: Social commentary paragraph with expansion moment labeled. This companion enhances — it does not replace — Mr. Gray's instruction.