Essay Networks

I was born In Sacramento, California and I have lived here my whole life. This is all I know and I really have nothing to compare it to. When I meet people that are not from California and they find out that I am, they immediately ask me certain questions. The questions are based on stereotypes or myths about California and the people that live here. From an outsider’s perspective, California is thought to be a warm and sunny place all year round. California is seen as a home to celebrities and movie stars. People think all Californians are blonde haired and blue-eyed people that surf and live near beaches. California is also seen as a place where people have a lot of money, live in mansions and live extravagant lifestyles. Californians are often thought of as “hippies” or “freaks”, a lot more liberal in their appearances than the rest of the US. Unfortunately people come to California with certain expectations that are based on myths not reality, as a result they may end up disappointed and feeling a sense of betrayal.

A myth is defined in the Webster’s Online Dictionary as: a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone; especially: one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society. I see a myth as something people assume based on things they have heard, not on their own personal experiences.

I believe weather is part of the “California Dream”. Many people are interested in California because of our weather. They live in states where the weather is extremely difficult to bear in the winter and in the summer it isn’t as warm and sunny as they’d like. The thing is, although California may be warmer than other states, it still does not have wonderful weather all year round. I love the summers in California because it is mostly warm and sunny, but I feel like the rest of the year is just too cold for my liking. In my opinion California only has two seasons, summer and winter. I sense that when others move to California with a certain idea in their mind they feel betrayed after they live through their first California winter.

I trust that Joan Didion agrees that California is not exactly the place it is made out to be. In her essay “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream”, she talks about The San Bernardino Valley. She portrays this place as if it were comparable to hell. “Not the harsher California, haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains, devastated by the hot dry Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and whines through the eucalyptus windbreaks and works on the nerves”. (Dreamers 3) I feel that in what she wrote here she is saying that California is thought to have beautiful weather, but in can be horrible as well. At times California’s heat becomes unbearable. It becomes so hot you feel like it is hard for you to breathe. You’d think that with the wind blowing it would help to cool it down, but when it is that hot it only makes it feel that much hotter and more unbearable. Like many things in California, the weather tends to be one extreme or the other. California at times can get very cold; Mark Twain was supposedly quoted as saying “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”. The weather is only one myth that Didion discusses in her writings.

In Didion’s book Where I Was From, she tells the story of the history of her family. She tells us how her family struggled to migrate west back in 1846. When Didion talks about the women in her family she is proud. They were extremely hard workers, who worked with what little they had. “These women in my family would seem to have been pragmatic and in their deepest instincts clinically radical, given to breaking clean with everyone and everything they knew. They could shoot and they could handle stock and when their children outgrew their shoes they could learn from the Indians how to make moccasins”(WIWF 7). I believe that by Didion telling the story about her female relatives she is trying to disprove a myth. Most people believe that the men are the ones who made all the accomplishments throughout history, but realistically women did a vast amount of it. Many women were stronger in spirit than the men. The women were the pillars who supported the entire family. The women were the ones who were expected to take care of the families. They cooked; fed the family, set up camp every place they stayed, did all the cleaning & kept the families on track throughout their trip. The women had to stay strong; they could not show emotion or allow hardships to slow them down. If there was a death along the way, they were not allowed the luxury of having time to grieve, they had to bury the body & keep moving forward. “They tended to avoid dwelling on just what that end might imply”(WIWF 7). They were quite aware that people may die along the way or that they will have to face terrible hardships, but that was a chance they were willing to take. They felt that the sacrifices they were making were worth the problems along the way. “They didn’t come west for homes & security, but for adventure & money”(WIWF 16). They set out to live the golden dream and they were determined to find it one way or another. The families already had homes and a sense of security; they were coming to California for a new life, an adventure and the hope that they would somehow find prosperity.

In Joan Didion’s book Slouching Towards Bethlehem, she wrote an essay called “Some Dreamers of The Golden Dream”. She talks about how many people came to California in search of the golden dream. I think the idea of a golden dream is just that, a dream, or a myth. . Lucille Miller is “a woman motivated by love and greed”(Dreamers 22). Lucile Miller, just like many others, headed west towards California for what she thought would be a better life. “Of course she came from somewhere else, came off the prairie in search of something she had seen in a movie or heard on the radio”(Dreamers 7). She ended up getting so wrapped up in the idea of “The Golden Dream” that she lost everything she had as well as the hope for anything in the future. She was having an affair with a married man, and then she was convicted of murdering her husband for insurance money. Overall I think Lucille Miller was just looking for a better life. When she got to where she was going and realized that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be she must have felt betrayed. This was the same thing had been happening to families portrayed in the movie “Grapes of Wrath”. Families started heading west after seeing flyers advertising good paying jobs, but when they arrived the jobs were scarce and didn’t pay much at all. I think that sometimes having your hopes up and then being let down or betrayed in this sort of way makes people do things they would typically not do. I believe that through her writings Joan Didion herself is trying to figure out where she fits into this whole picture we call life. Her ancestors accomplished a lot coming here long ago; she hopes that she will be able to live up to their reputations as strong women.

I believe that when a person has certain expectations and then those expectations are not met they will tend to feel a sense of betrayal. Feeling betrayed can make people, such as Lucille Miller do things they would not normally do. I think betrayal has the capability of also changing you as a person overall. I feel that when a person feels betrayed it has a way of lowering their self-esteem and self-confidence, destroying trust and allows them to feel completely deceived. I think that with so many people coming to California based of the idea of “The Golden Dream” which is mostly a myth, they have been completely betrayed. Although people came to California for many different reasons, such as the weather, better jobs and a better life overall, the feelings of disappointment, deceit and betrayal were still the same.

Works CitedDidion, Joan. Slouching Towards Bethlehem. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1968Didion, Joan. Where I Was From. New York: Vintage Book, 2003