Run River by Joan Didion - Essay Example

Run River and Joan Didion It was in 1963 when Joan Didion published the novel Run River. The setting of the novel resembles the author’s home town of Sacramento in California. People and places within and around the Sacramento area influenced not just the places but also the characters in the novel. The novel was the end product of Didion’s feeling of being homesick because of being away from Sacramento far too long. It was pretty much felt that all of the longing which enveloped the whole novel was about someone’s longing for true affection and acceptance (Houston and Lombardi 11-2). There is the sense of nationalism and superiority that surrounds each of the major characters in the novel. An example of this would be the main protagonist of the novel, Lily Knight McClellan. At the onset of the story, superiority was felt when Lily was said to be putting an amount of Joy, an expensive perfume, in her body. Didion described the act quite sensually when stated “still barefoot from the shower, picked up from her dressing table a bottle of Joy, splashed a large amount of it onto her hand, and reached down the neckline of her dress to spread it, a kind of amulet, across her small bare breasts” (Didion 3). With this notion, it can be concluded already that the McClellans belong to the upper class of the society. The latter statement can also be supported when Didion described the watch that Lily got as a gift from her husband, Everett. The author’s statement towards the watch was “fastening the clasp on the diamond wrist watch Everett had given her two years before on their seventeenth anniversary” (Didion 3). It was not a confidential matter that during the 1950s having a diamond in a person’s possession would give the perception that the owner belonged to the upper class of the social order. The word “diamond” was mentioned a couple more times in the novel. A scene from the first chapter expressed how Lily was looking for something to read at her son’s room. This scene gives the image that the lead protagonist was an educated woman and, therefore, complementing the conclusion that she had come from the richer families in the Sacramento area or in the whole state of California. It further describes the time when the Sacramento region was still on the verge of being a commercial area. It was expressed by Didion through the thoughts of Lily when the protagonist stated “The books could no doubt be found, Knight had informed her, right downtown in Sacramento. She did not seem to realize that there were now paperback bookstores in Sacramento” (Didion 5). It was unlike Everett to want to go away. Since the war he had left the ranches only for occasional weekends, growers’ meetings, funerals down the Valley; one might have thought him some agrarian Ivar Kreuger, guardian of an ephemeral empire in need of constant control, split-second manipulation (Didion 8). It was how Lily described her husband Everett. It seemed like a premonition that something not good was about to take place. The event bound to happen was like the cherry on top of the ice cream with regard to all the unhappiness that they had as a married couple. As sophisticated did Didion describe Lily, the opposite was thought towards Everett who belongs to one of ranching families in the Sacramento area (Houston and Lombardi 12). However, there was a statement expressed in the novel that made Everett sort of boastful towards the things that his family has compared to other families. It was when Lily remembered what her husband stated during the earlier years of their marriage towards the telephone: Everett’s aversion to answering the telephone had seemed, when they were first married, a great compliment: we won’t have it known, dear, that we own a tel-e-pho-own. It had taken her almost two years to see that it had nothing to do with her, that Everett was about the telephone exactly the way he was about the mail, as wary as if he were investigating night noises at the basement door (Didion 11). What has transpired could have been the reason as to why Lily was unhappy in a marriage going on its 2nd decade. Ryder Channing was one of Lily’s lovers within the years of her unhappy married life. Channing, unlike Lily and Everett, can be considered as an outsider in the area. He was into real estate which made him an antagonist to Everett as people who are in into real estate buys and develops agricultural land and transforms it to either housing or commercial area. Channing’s field of business can eliminate or destroy Everett’s way or earning (Houston and Lombardi 12). It was not just Lily who had Ryder Channing as a lover. Even Martha, Everett’s sister, had an affair with the foreign realtor. Martha and Lily seem to have a tendency to share for a man’s attention. Everett’s younger sister, Martha was the apple of the eye of his brother before Lily came into their lives. She was also the one who introduced Ryder Channing to Lily who ended up having an affair. One of the quotes that Martha made which made the readers think of what her relationship is with Lily was when she said: Maybe everybody wants it. But most people don’t want it more than anything else in the world. The way Everett does. You might want it, I might want it. But when the opportunity to have it practically hits us over the head, we just about knock ourselves out getting out of the way (Didion 120). Martha McClellan drowns herself at the Sacramento River which became the cause of her death. Constant competition with Lily and the other females in the novel seemed to have pressured her daily life. She was dumped by Channing for another woman who would give him more social power and greater social stature. Then she was the one who introduced her sister-in-law to Channing who became lovers as well. There is that guilt over Everett towards the suicide of his sister. There are times when Martha will just kept silent even if Everett will talk to her and ask her for what she wants. There is now desperation in the tone of her older brother when Everett’s realization was expressed in the novel: What is it you want. He had said it to Martha (what do you want, baby, he had said, what did you want) the night she drowned off the dock where his gun now lay. He had wanted to say it to Sarah, every time she came home (only she did not now call it home). He had wanted to say it to Knight and he had wanted to say it to Julie. He looked at Lily again. She had the blank, frightened look that she had some nights when he woke her from bad dreams. She had always been afraid of the dark. Sweet Jesus, what had she wanted? (Didion 24) Didion expressed Lily’s thoughts towards a conversation she had with Martha: The reconciliation made her quite as uncomfortable as the scene downstairs had; things said out loud had for her an aura of danger so volatile that it could be controlled only in that dark province inhabited by those who share beds. Although she could sometimes say things out loud to Everett, she did not know how to talk to Martha (Didion 121). A person has a tendency to be withdrawn to other people who either intimidate them or are not in good terms with them. There are too many emotions that have broiled between Lily and Martha, from Lily’s marriage to Everett to her affair with Ryder Channing. If there was only an opportunity for these 2 women to talk about what is happening, they could have coexisted with each other and have spared not just the life of Martha, but also of Ryder and Everett. People keep their silence most of the time and endure what they are feeling to themselves. It is like torturing their emotions and killing it slowly. This should not happen. Life is too beautiful for it to be lived with unhappiness and sorrow. There is more into living than money, power and social stature. Family is the basic building block of the society and therefore, should be the source of happiness for a person. It should not be the one who will ruin the person in the process. Everybody is equal and has the same rights and privileges. If people will be vocal towards what they are feeling or experiencing, tragic events would be avoided and lives would be spared from being sacrificed. A person’s happiness should not be the cause of another’s sorrow. Works Cited Didion, Joan. Run River. Michigan: Vintage Books, 1994. Print. Houston, Lynn Marie, and William V. Lombardi. Reading Joan Didion. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2009. Print. Read More