Analysis Of The Santa Ana And Linda Thomas's Brush Fire

On April 29, 1910, the largest forest fire in American history occurred. Some would come to know it as the Big Burn, or the Big Blowup. Later others called it the (the one that says it saved American landscape.) This travesty took more than 100 men. The impact it had on Americans was monumental. Timothy Egan’s The Big Burn, he writes about the many people who perished during this disaster. Stories of people who were engulfed by the flames at Bitterroot Mountain who had little chance of escaping their devastating fate. Even though this is still seen as a travesty, some look at it in a different way. Due to how large the fire was and how far it stretched, it made people aware of the importance to protect Americas forests and natural resources. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, reform was occurring. The United States population was on a rise which had an effect on economic growth. This caused expansion in the consumer market and made way for an enormous amount of advancement in technology. Due to all of this, the demand for natural resources vastly increased. Inventions such as cars and trains consumed massive amounts of fossil fuels. Wood was stripped away from forests to make comfort items such as chairs, tables and other items for the large number of families now setting in the United States from foreign countries. People did not seem to pay much attentions to the effects these changes were having on the land. However, President Theodor Roosevelt had

“ 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, shedding light on two very different aspects of the Santa Ana winds.

The imagery of fire in Edwidge Danticat 's short story “A Wall of Fire Rising” possesses a very powerful meaning and also continually changes throughout the entirety of the story. Fire was a very sacred thing to have, especially during the time this story has taken place.

In the essay “Los Angeles Notebooks,” written by Joan Didion, she writes about a strange event called the Santa Ana. She explains that the Santa Ana is a wind that causes people to act strangely and when it blows, “deadly” events can happen and that the suicide rate increases. The author, Joan Didion , uses pathos and ethos to argue that Santa Ana influences people’s behavior negatively.

In 2003, possibly one of the worst wildfires in California’s history occurred. This fire, referred to as the Cedar Fire, spread across 273,246 acres.

no surprise that wildfires are a huge issue in the western states. Especially on Indian Reservations. Two articles that focus on this issue are called Secretary Zinke Directs Interior Bureaus to Take aggressive Action to Prevent Wildfires, US Department of Interior & Western US Faces Wildfires Explosion by Kieran Cooke, Climate News Network. Both of these articles argue that wildfires shouldn’t become normalized and that something should be done to prevent and/or be better prepared for when wildfires occur. In essence these articles focus primarily on the amount of land burning and the effect it has on vegetation.

It’s 5:15 AM, and the streets are quiet. By 5:30, the streets are torn apart, and rubble is strewn everywhere. What happened in those fifteen minutes was the San Fransisco earthquake. When you look at “Comprehending the Calamity” by Emma Burke and Laurence Yep’s Dragonwings, you can truly imagine the extent of the damage and fear, even though Burke’s purpose is to inform, while Yep’s is to entertain.

Didion’s tone was serious, ominous, and dark, and was very different from Thomas’s tone which was more positive. Although acknowledging the destructive nature of the fires caused by the Santa Ana winds, Thomas generally talked about positive results of the fires. She describes the “amazing sight” of the fire as she watches “the flames lick up a hillside” and ends the essay by reminding the reader that the “chaparral will return.” By this, she means that many of the plants in chaparral country need the heat of the flames to reproduce, so within a few weeks, new plants will rise from the ashes. The fire also helps get rid of the dead plants that need to be burnt so they can get out of the way for new plants to come in. Didion has a very different tone regarding the winds. She describes the various hints of change with dark words. To her, there is an “eerie absence of surf” and the “heat was surreal,” instead of it simply being hot with no waves in the water. The author particularly chooses words with creepy connotations to make the reader feel a similar feeling to the uneasiness that the Southern California natives feel. These contrasting tones make the authors' opposing views on the winds very evident.

Those who have lived through natural disasters view them differently than those who have not. Experience helps us understand circumstances in a new way. In the essays “Brush Fire” by Linda Thomas, and “The Santa Ana” by Joan Didion, the authors perceive the mysterious Santa Ana winds that blow through California, and the deadly brush fires that it creates. Through the use of imagery, word choice, tone, and description the authors depict the beauty and destruction that they see from the point of view of a native or an outsider.

Cristy FredaAP Lit7 November 2017Lutie Johnson is the victim to the abuse of a cold, windy November day on 116th street. In The Street, Petry establishes Lutie Johnson’s negative relationship to the urban setting through the use of imagery, personification, and selection of detail.Petry uses imagery that affects all of the reader’s senses throughout the excerpt to establish Lutie Johnson’s negative relationship to the urban setting. The text begins with Petry describing 116th street having a cold wind that “rattled the tops of garbage cans, sucked window shades out through the top of opened windows and set them flapping back against the windows” (ll 2-5). This quote immediately establishes a negative relationship

The first essay, “Brush Fire” by Linda Thomas, viewed the Santa Ana winds as something good. The message that was conveyed in this essay was that

There are always two sides to every story, sometimes even more. When discussing the phenomenon of the Santa Ana winds and their accompanying brush fires, Linda Thomas and Joan Didion each have their own side of the story. Throughout the texts, Didion and Thomas converge with one another by means of their life experiences as southern Californians and also through using sensory details to illustrate their stories. However, they do not share similar feelings towards the nature of the winds and fire. The authors diverge in this way as well as in their viewpoints on the conflict of people and nature.

Bruce Wayne Ap Composition October 2014 “Santa Ana” vs “Brush Fire” The essay “The Santa Ana” by Joan Didion and “Brush Fire” by Linda Thomas are written very differently about similar topics. On one hand we have the ominous, eerie and unexplainable feels of the power of the winds by Didion and on the other hand, we have the optimistic and positivity of the winds from Thomas. Both authors being native Californians have been writing many published pieces of literature for years. Didion’s purpose is to impress upon readers the idea that the wind themselves change the way people act and react.

A well-known Gilded Age author of satirical pieces, Mark Twain, in his text “Dreams Dissipated”, argues the elite and other influential groups he despises, should not be idolized by the public. Twain’s purpose is to reveal the true intentions and behavior of these groups at the face of tragedy in order to stop the public from aspiring to be like them or seek guidance from them. He adopts a connotative tone for his audience who may be unaware of the immoral behavior the elite display during the “great” earthquake in San Francisco. Twain supports this claim by first referring to a tragic event using connotative diction to hint at the animal-like behavior of these groups, then he illustrates a chaotic scene and the ill-fitted reactions of the

An understanding of how fires, wildfires in particular, work was a fundamental part in learning how to fight fires properly. This understanding entailed knowing what makes a fire a fire, what could cause a fire, what hinders and aids a fire’s growth, what different types of fire there are, and the characteristics of said types. Without the basic understanding of these things, it would have made the evolution of aerial firefighting next to impossible.