A Comparative Study of Grief: Joan Didion's the Year of Magical Thinking and Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole

Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and David Lindsay-Abaire's play Rabbit Hole both focus upon coping with grief and how it evolves. Yet the plays contain sharp distinctions in their presentation of grief. Didion's spotlights herself, the author function, and therefore tells the story from the first person while Lindsay-Abaire's shows an entire family. Didion mourns the loss of her long-time husband and adult child while Lindsay-Abaire's characters, particularly Becca and Jason who will be discussed in the ensuing paragraphs, mourn the accidental death of a four-year old boy.

Didion's grief appears to be more of a matter of denial in which she forces herself to resume her daily life despite her fantastical musings that her dead husband will someday return; she seems calm and remarkably strong to everyone observing her trauma. She shares this characteristic with Becca but Becca's grief is more developed than Joan's. Jason, however, has the least mature response to death out of the three personalities, representing his innocence.

While Joan and Becca grieve the loss of their loved ones, they both exhibit sharply anal and pragmatic tendencies. But as previously mentioned, Joan's still in a dreaming and denying trance; her loved ones died more recently than Becca's. Becca, at the opening of the play, has known of the death of her son for eight months, which explains why she's more accepting of the event than Joan. She has had more months to reflect. Joan is only just starting to wonder about the death in her family, go over fond memories (i.e., swimming with Quintana, and voice insecurities and regrets (i.e., did Quintana love her as much as she did her father?) This is why she is so susceptible to magical thinking: the deaths of her loved ones are still fresh so she harbors hope. Becca is far beyond ever entertaining that impossible possibility.

Examples of Joan and Beca's sheer attention to detail and collected nature run abundant. Thinking about mundane chores serves as a form of distraction for them. Joan takes care of all the duties related to the hospital, insurance, organizing the funeral, and more. She even takes the time to inspect her husband's hospital records. Becca, in the same manner, sorts through her dead son's belongings, deals with reprimanding her sister for her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and even arranges an open house to sell the family home.

The more time each woman devotes to doing this and that, the less time she spends thinking about her loss. She can also fool others into believing that she is fine, even independent. Joan acknowledges that she's putting on act to divert herself from publicly grieving; it becomes clear that Becca has been putting on an act, too, when she hits the stranger in the grocery store completely irrationally.

Jason, however, is very unlike Joan and Becca. Jason is mostly calm and he doesn't fall back on magical thinking. When he visits Becca's home, it is clear that he then becomes nervous and confused. He has been trying to have a normal teenage life by writing for his school lit mag and going to prom but he still feels guilty. He tells Becca that he may have been speeding slightly the day he ran over her son. Ultimately, he just wants to apologize and absolve himself but there is really no need to do so. The audience is convinced that his running over Danny was an accident. Jason is innocent, someone that Becca perhaps sees as an older version of her son, explaining why she is so affectionate toward him.

While the two plays definitely offer two completely different stories, they both revolve around grief. Becca and Joan have a more sophisticated way of grieving but Joan slightly less so. Jason is still unable to understand what he is feeling. All of them, however, will spend the rest of their lives thinking about these deaths.