The Setting and the Story: Joan Didion’s “The Santa Ana.
A passage by Joan Didion about California’s Santa Ana winds from her essay “Los Angeles Notebook.” There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San.
The ominous description of LosAngeles preceding the arrival of the Santa Ana wind, juxtaposed with a scientific-sounding explanation develops Joan Didion's view that human behavior is basically a result of mechanics. She recreates the tense, stifling.
Didion also describes foehn winds, the equivalent of a Santa Ana in European countries. Didion quotes Raymond Chandler who wrote that “every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husband’s necks” (31-33).
An index of Joan Didion's essays available free online. It occurred to me, in California in June and in Atlanta in July and in New Orleans in August, in the course of watching first the California primary and then the Democratic and Republican national conventions, that it had not been by accident that the people with whom I had preferred to spend time in high school had, on the whole, hung.
Joan Didion the Santa Ana Essay Sample In the essay “Santa Ana” by Joan Didion, the author was very descriptive with imagery, tone, objective description, and subjective description. The way she spoke to the reader about the weather in Los Angeles actually drew an illustration in my head due to the great description by the author.
In Joan Didion’s “Los Angeles Notebook” her description of the Santa Ana winds encompasses an eerie, “Twilight Zone” tone. Her use of ominous vocabulary created an uneasy tone and contrast of the Santa Ana’s with everyday life.
Joan Didion’s description of the Santa Ana winds in “The Los Angeles Notebook” suggests folk-lore like occurrences and superstitions. Didion uses an unnatural, disturbing form of imagery to create an eerie effect. The short choppy sentences and clauses add peril, and thick tension.
The Santa Ana Winds “ The Santa Ana” by Joan Didion and “Brush Fire” by Linda Thomas offer complete separate views to a similar topic, the winds of Southern California. In a first person narration the authors write of the wind from her own experience of living in California and from her own perspective.
The Santa Ana Winds, seen through of the eyes of Joan Didion, is perceived as frightening, powerful, and mysterious. The arrival of the dry, incendiary Santa Ana wind’s creates an unknown uneasiness for the people of Los Angeles. The unearthly atmosphere is shown through the issues created by the winds before even arriving.
Like the foehn of Austria and Switzerland, the Khamsin of Israel, the mistral of France, and the Mediterranean Sirocco, the Santa Ana winds of Los Angeles have deep social and person impacts on the residents of the community. Joan Didion aims to verbalize and categorize this impact through her essay entitled “Los Angeles Notebook”.
This shows how Didion feels negatively towards the Santa Ana and how it changes the air around the people change as well. In the third paragraph Didion describes the effects the Santa Ana has on humans. Didion also describes foehn winds, the equivalent of a Santa Ana in European countries.
Joan Didion, born 5th December 1934 is an American author, well known for her amazing writing works and her literary journalism. Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work.
Joan Didion S Essay Santa Ana Winds. Didion Text Analysis Essay In the essay, “Los Angeles Notebook”, Joan Didion outlines the uncontrollable effects of the Santa Ana winds. She conveys her views of the Santa Ana winds as a fierce force of nature by describing its effects on the residents and environment. The tone is very precise and vivid.
