Didion’s Prose Blends the “Eye” with the “I”

I know I mentioned the title of this book—Salvador (1983)--in our first week's discussion as an example of Didion's more "objective" reportage. Though, I think I also said that she views even real, factual events through her emotional prism.

I pulled the book off the shelf just now to find a good passage to give you. Much of the book is, in fact, documented, factual reporting, but she is definitely there as the "eye" who sees what she is telling us. Here is one passage early in the book where she brings the two (the personal and the objective) together:

"One shadow sat behind the smoked glass windows of a Cherokee Chief parked at the curb in front of the restaurant; the other crouched between the pumps at the Esso station next door, carrying a rifle. It seemed to me unencouraging that my husband and I were the only people seated on the porch. In the absence of the headlights the candle on our table provided the only light, and I fought the impulse to blow it out. We continued talking, carefully. Nothing came of this, but I did not forget the sensation of having been in a single instance demoralized, undone, humiliated by fear, which is what I meant when I said that I came to understand in El Salvador the mechanism of terror" (26).

The next page begins with a long paragraph quoting a report from the US Ambassador to El Salvador on "The Chronology of Events Related to Salvadoran Situation." This book is a report on a rebel insurgency made up mostly of peasants and indigenous people against the crude military government of El Salvador, yet another corrupt, dictatorial regime propped up by the US in its efforts to thwart Communism. Ah, where did those times go?

Anyway, let me call a few things about this passage to your attention and you will see how it connects to our earlier reading. She is talking about how it "seemed" to her and what her "sensation" was in the situation. But look at the realistic details in which she has wrapped the emotional sensations: the depiction of the threatening "shadow" in the car, which is identified by make and model, the armed man kneeling between the specifically-named "Esso station" gas pumps, and we have the sharp image of the faces of Didion and her husband, well-lit targets, illuminated by a simple candle flame. There's the tension in her "fight" with herself, not to call attention to themselves or do anything startling by blowing out the candle, and that lovely word "carefully," where we might expect "quietly." "Carefully" is such a beautifully chosen word, because it goes so well with the tension of the situation, with their awareness of their watchers of whom they need to appear unaware, of the delicate terror of the scene.

What a pleasure prose like this is!

The whole book is also a factual report of events, observed by a real person, who feels real emotions in the situations. She's not necessarily there to empathize with the victims, but to show us, the readers identifying with her and feeling her emotions, their starkly displayed, realistically drawn corpses.

She can be both detached from the events and filled with emotions that are expressed indirectly. Her prose is not over-the-top emotional, but pared down and direct. Her vocabulary is simple and the sentences are straightforward, not convoluted and complex.