Joan Didion On Morality Analysis
In the essay "On Morality", author Joan Didion claims that morality is not the pursuit of ideals, but a primitive code of ethics with the singular goal of survival. Didion illustrates this point using examples such as the Donner-Reed Party, who, after being trapped high in the freezing Sierra Mountains, resorted to cannibalizing the deceased members of the party to survive. In grim situations like this, the drive to survive at any cost overrules our typical social code of ethics, which Didion describes "wagon-train morality" (Didion). Under normal circumstances, our reactions are much more sympathetic, as evidenced in the example of the car accident when "[t]he nurse explained that her husband, a talc miner, had stayed on the highway with