Self-Respect
The essay that I am summarizing today deals with the issue of self-respect and the search for self-respect. At the beginning of the essay Didion describes a situation that she experienced at the age of nineteen. The experience deals with the failure to be pledged to a college honor society. The author realizes that life is judged on merit and not who you are. Didion begins to understand that all situations have consequences. The author did not make the grades to be pledged into the honor society; therefore seeing that you must earn things in life. Understanding that things are earned and not given made the author feel a sense of a loss of innocence. Didion sees that actions that win approval as a child are not the same actions that win approval as adults. The author understands that the way self- . . .
The author says a person must have self-respect because without it a person will go and try to find him or herself and find no one exists. The author describes a situation called alienation from self. Didion says that people try and accomplish living without self-respect everyday. Didion acknowledges that people can live without self-respect but she also describes the inner piece of people who have self-respect. This is when a person has no self-respect and cannot stand to do anything because of the fear of rejection. The author compares people who live with and without self-respect. She describes how a person cannot risk this fear because they have no confidence in themselves. When you are by yourself you always see the real person inside, no matter how hard you try and disguise it. The author discusses the feeling of living without self-respect. The author describes the feeling of waking up one day and dealing with the realization of having no self-respect. She describes self-respect as the ability to love, discriminate and to remain indifferent. She describes how self-respect builds character in people and tells how character is the main place where self-respect begins. The author reflects on how prior generations knew more about self-respect because of how they were raised and the circumstances that they grew up in. She uses comparisons to emphasize the dreary feeling that you feel inside. The author realizes self-respect is not how others see you but how you see yourself.
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Acceptance Essays
