The Symbol of New York

In Joan Didion's story "Goodbye to All That", New York represents a symbol of Didion's procrastination and unwillingness to move forward in her life. While in New York she does not count her experiences as being part of real life like other people there do, and instead she sees the city as a "mirage". For Didion, New York is indicative of a dilatory limbo in which she thinks she doesn't have to grow up yet and face the world. As a twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three year old she is really on her own for the first time in her life, especially without the support and guidance of school anymore, and she doesn't want to be the adult that she is. Didion believes that things don't count there, that she can stay out all night until the sun comes up and then go to work with only two hours of sleep, and that she can hop endlessly from party to party (good or bad, as she states) whenever she pleases. New York is Didion's dreamworld, the place that isn't real, and that she isn't really in.