The Unharmonious Relationship Between My Father And The Father's Family

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Didion displays her resignation as she writes about the unharmonious relationship between her husband and her family. Her husband explains to her even though he likes her family, he still feels uncomfortable and uneasy during their visits because she tends to “Fall into their ways, which are difficult, oblique, deliberately inarticulate” (636). Even Didion’s family shows unsettlement as she writes “My brother does not understand my husband’s inability to perceive the advantage in the rather common real-estate transaction known as ‘sale-leaseback,’ and my husband in turn does not understand why so many of the people he hears about in my father’s house have recently been committed to mental hospitals or booked on drunk-driving charges” (636). Didion uses these contrasts of her two families to display the dissonant nature between her husband and her family in Central Valley, California. In her contrast and comparisons, she uses a discrete tone such as “What could the Canton dessert plates mean to him? How could he have known about the assay scales, why should he care if he did know?” (6...

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