Commentary On The Essay 'Holy Water' By Joan Didion

In the essay ‘’holy water’’ Joan Didion writes about the importance of water in everyday of our life and how she sees it through her own eyes as a Californian who value water and view it from a religious prospective. In her own words, ‘’ holy water’’, she refers to water as an essential source to sustain life, but not as something related to religion in particular. All that to say that the less you have of something, the more valuable it becomes. Joan presents her argument about by going back to past when the consumption of water was in its minimum levels due to the small number of population at that time. Then, she argues about how the water consumption is being regulated by the government to preserve as much as they can for future generation. By going through these arguments Joan is

As an illustration, California has the highest populace among all U.S. states, with a Mediterranean climate, and three deserts that cover more than tenth of the its landmass. It was clear to Joan that wells were regularly running dry during her childhood. In her essay she focuses on availability of water and it is controlled. Undoubtedly, she uses the symbol of the California swimming pool, when she writes ''a pool is misapprehended as a trapping of affluence, real or pretended, and of a kind of hedonistic attention to the body. Actually, a pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable'' (Joan 3). She also describes how she was surrounded by a massive number of machines at the California State Water Project Operations Control Center taking in reports from all over the state about water she wanted to be the one to control it. As she says “wanted to be the one, that day, who was shining the olives, filling the gardens, and flooding the daylong valleys like the Nile” (Joan