Joan Didion Democracy Summary

Imagine for a moment yourself waking up in the morning, looking down and seeing that you are in somebody else's body. Your thoughts are still the same, all of your emotions, desires, sentiments are still the same, but on the outside, in the mirror, you are not yourself. The world no longer remembers the old you. It only knows what you've become. Were you ever somebody else? As time goes by and you realize there is no going back, it gets harder and harder to remember what came before. This detachment is a reality that people who live a public lifestyle face. This detachment is what prompted Inez Victor to tell a reporter that memory is the major cost of public life in Joan Didion’s Democracy (Democracy). Through stories within Democracy and

In Democracy, the mass exposure to the media causes Inez Victor to "lose track" of whom she is (Didion 51). The fact that Inez had been brought all over the political world by her husband and had been publicized about all over allows many people to believe they had gotten to know her (Didion 48). "Most people of a type, most people who read certain newspapers and bought certain magazines, most people who knew what kind of girls came with the life" were the kind of individuals who put a definition to Inez Victor (Didion 48). These people eventually take their toll on Inez and eliminate the private aspects of Inez's life. Everything about Inez becomes a show for the many eyes focused on her to watch. Didion explains how "Inez Victor had come to view most occasions as photo opportunities" (Didion 50). This distinct public persona placed upon her by the media and its viewers completely engulfs Inez Victor's mind and memory of whom she is. Inez's private self, her exact thoughts, and feelings seem to become lost to her. Didion observes in the novel that Inez loses precise details of herself, not just in her mind, but even in her mannerisms. Didion points out how Inez develops, "a habit of smoothing her gaze in the middle distance, a habit of smoothing her face in response by pressing her temples with her middle finger; a noticeably frequent blink as if the photographers' strobes had triggered a continuing flash on her retina" (Didion 50). Inez loses herself in the ongoing portrayal of a fake persona that is her public identity. This loss is why Inez concludes that memory is the major cost of public life in our democracy, because public life is forcing her to be someone she is not. Inez seems to suggest that she has forgotten what the private moments in life are like and consequently,