Joan Didion On Self Respect Summary

Joan Didion, the author of On Self Respect, claims that self-respect demonstrates a display once called character; she also argues that the ability to sleep well at night depends on self-respect. Namely, one who realizes that the choices and the actions he/she had made have brought his/her today, has self-respect. Considering Didion’s arguments and personal, real-life examples, self-respect must have at least some influences on physical behaviors.

To begin with, according to Joan Didion, people living with self-respect and self-confidence, reveal certain qualities: toughness and a kind of moral nerve. In other words, those people do not regret choices and actions already made and taken, but rather recognize that they have responsibility for

things that they’ve done so far and that they must live with them. As a result of this self-introspection, those individuals exude self-respect by behaving differently from those without self-respect: either in good or bad way.
Joan Didion asserts in her essay, On Self Respect, “Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves”.

This quote clearly demonstrates the relationship between physical behavior and self-respect. That is, the ability to sleep easily at night indicates self-respect, if not directly related, since one without self-respect would be busy ruminating on his/her misfortune. This behavior, sleeping well at night, represents a behavior with self-respect in both good and bad ways. The statement does not clearly state any information about things one had done before sleeping. But, probably, most people would presume that it doesn’t matter whether one did a bad or good thing, because once figures out his/her identity and reconciles actions with self-conscience, one would merely sleep more easily at

night.
Moreover, Joan Didion brings two characters to attention as illustrations.

She compares the two careless who seem equally improbable candidates for self-respect: Julian English in Appointment in Samarra and Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby; Jordan Baker had a self-respect, while Julian English didn’t and committed suicide. An incurably dishonest, Jordan Baker once said in The Great Gatsby, “It takes two to make an accident”. To wit, she justified what she had done (primarily bad) by recognizing that not only in car accidents, in which it is more often than not one person’s fault, but also in a relationship, two people have to involve. If Jordan Baker didn’t have self-respect, just like Julian English, she would not sleep, to say nothing of caring about how other people would think of her. Rather, knowing the price of things, she stands as a great example of person with self-respect having the courage of one’s mistakes. Also, Jordan Baker, unlike Daisy in The Great Gatsby, a fool with money who married a rich man, bewitched by the sensual voice of money at the moment, will probably cut off the ring of same miseries

faster.
In addition to fictional characters, there exist some great examples in a real life situations, too. Conventional wisdom has it that criminals, especially psychopathic murderers and rapers do not regret what they just perpetrated. And Joan Didion without any doubt, would define them as individuals equipped with self-respect. They have self-confidence in what they have done, no matter how cruel or catastrophic. Faces of those criminals seen in TV, however, were the happiest faces in the world. Having pride themselves on their ideologies and plans that seem totally outlawed to ordinary, non-psychopathic people, those felons justified their actions and allowed themselves to smile because they believed that their ideologies only reveal the truth.
In conclusion, numerous cases, including real-life examples and fictional characters, explicate the relationship between physical behavior and self-respect. No matter how bad, cruel or abnormal people seem, they had a common trait — toughness and a kind of moral nerve. They chose to do something, actually took actions, and without any regret, lived with them, the choice they have made. Surely, having a self-respect will allow people to possess a great skill for life, which will help them continue on.