Joan Didion Los Angeles Notebook Summary

For the first time in 130 years, more young adults are living with parents until their mid thirties. Part of this could be an emotional attachment keeping them from leaving home because after they leave, everything will change. However, many are losing their real sense of home and are just using it as a place where they can avoid paying bills and many other responsibilities. Many young adults now do not understand the extensive sacrifice it is to leave their one and only home. In “On Going Home,” Joan Didion expounds on her struggle to connect with her current house, in a nostalgic and resigned tone, and vivid imagery, symbolism, and comparison Didion expresses the regret she feels every time she remembers she left her “home”.

Where I Was From by Joan Didion is a book written about Didion’s perspective of the history of California. Throughout the novel Didion shares her families past experiences and adventures of moving west. Didion not only shows the readers how California has changed but also how it changed her as a person as well. Particularly in “Part One”, the opening paragraph contains an abridgement history of the eventful westward journey of Didion’s pioneer family unit, focusing particularly on the women in the family and tracing vertebral column six generations the blood of her famous hemicranias. Didion makes a very unpersuasive argument in “Part one” by her ineffective use of organization but effective use of grounds and claims.

Didion personifies the wind as almost an unknown epidemic. Similar to when an unknown disease goes viral, all walks of life are affected. Didion clearly states how teachers, students, doctors, to physicists, to generally everyone becomes unhappy and uncomfortable during the winds. She does not write of how the wind caused fire to ravage the shrublands, but she writes of the symptoms it inflicts on the people. Didion mentions all the after effects of the wind and the harm it can do like inflict paranoia. She mentions how the fear-stricken victims of southern California are paranoid like her neighbor that refuses to leave the house and her husband who roams with a machete. Didion’s personification of the wind focuses on a fearful and distant light.

“Where Worlds Collide” is an essay by Pico Iyer who talks about the expectations and reality of Los Angeles through the perspectives of travelers from different backgrounds. In “Where Worlds Collide,” Pico Iyer argues that even though Los Angeles is depicted as a vicinity to receive wealth, happiness, and many opportunities- it is actually the antithesis, and instead, many harsh prejudice and unending craziness will occur instead; Iyer argues this by using allusions, anaphoras, and juxtapositions to help convey what he is saying.

Joan Didion in her essay, “The Santa Ana” and Linda Thomas in her essay, “Brush Fire” describes the Santa Ana in two opposing stands with similar moves. Didion's purpose in writing her essay for the Santa Ana is to inform her readers. She informs them about the Santa Ana, the effect the winds have on human behavior, and how they have to live with the Santa Ana. Thomas writes her essay to engage readers on the Santa Ana’s effect on brushes. She gives details on how the Santa Ana causes natural brush fires and the beauty it is able to create in the aftermath.

The author’s frightening story, “The Storm” has all the expected things that a good scary story should have. It has a story line that gains suspense throughout the story, there is irony, and there is lots of

London begins his piece by reporting the facts and circumstances in which the disaster started, describing the damage caused by the earthquake’s fire to rapidly start the creation of his metaphorical approach of the event: the beginning of an impetuous invading force into the magnificent empire of San Francisco. In order to set up this image, London utilized specific connotative language such as “conflagration,” “modern

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.

In the lecture, Tom Hothem presented pictures about his life at the start of the presentation. In the beginning, I didn’t understand the point that he was trying to make. He talked about his favorite diving spots that he discovered while traveling around California. Seeing this I couldn’t necessarily correlate this to the reading. In the reading “Notes from a Native Daughter” by Joan Didion, an important note that Didion made was about how people from the East Coast, after visiting California, thought that they understood what the real California was, but in reality they didn’t, they were barely getting to know what California was really about (Didion). This uncertainty of the relation between the two sources led me on a journey to understand

Both writers use immense amounts of imagery to describe the Santa Ana Winds. Since Santa Ana is believed to be a terrifying wind, each author used imagery to either prove or refute the terror. Thomas proved the beauty in Southern California that occurred because of

While today Los Angeles is prided on being one of the most diverse cities in the United States, there was (and still is) a tremendous amount of resistance that had to be overcome. Society’s inclination to maintain homogeneity along with the testing of loyalties and allegiance through pressures of war have proven great obstacles in the evolution of what is now a majority-minority city. Nina Revoyr’s Southland gives a historic fictional recount of Los Angeles’ most tested times from perspectives looking in to the past, present, and future. The discovery of unpleasant truths through grave social injustices provide a painful reminder of Los Angeles’ history and consequently a warning for future setbacks. Southland is an emotional testament to the inescapability of discrimination within stratified cities and the unspoken necessity of assimilation that occurs as a result.

The author wrote this essay based on her experience of living in Los Angeles and dealing with these horrific winds. The focus of this essay was all on the dangers that the Santa Ana winds has brought to the state of California, specifically the southern parts. The message of this essay was that the Santa Ana winds were able to drive the citizens to the edge. This message was shaped throughout this essay, using rhetorical devices and moves in the text. The rhetorical devices this text uses are tone and syntax. The tone of this essay was serious and devastating. In the beginning, the author was serious in her tone about a topic that is very grim. “I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it.” This quote explains the author describing how no one has heard that the Santa Ana winds are coming, but everyone knows it’s coming because they can feel it. This quote is poised in such a serious matter that the reader can sense the tone in this very sentence. The syntax that is represented in this essay is when the author is foreshadowing the rest of her essay in the first sentence. “There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension.” This quote explains how something doesn’t feel right, which the reader can infer that the author is talking about a Santa Ana rolling in sometime soon in the

At the moment of its waking Sacramento lost…its character…” (Didion 173). In other words, Didion is pointing out how Sacramento is becoming more immoral as urbanization and industrialization occur. However, what is most interesting is how Didion expresses Sacramento’s loss of character through her own experiences. For instance, Didion describes her wonderful memories basking in the Californian sun, rivers, fields and valleys as a child, showcasing the real natural Sacramento. However, later on as a n adult when she returns to Sacramento, Didion finds that the Sacramento she has been seeking is no longer there, as a result of industrial development:

In Adrienne Rich’s “Storm Warnings,” the progressive structure details the storm’s advancement, the imagery illustrates the surrounding environment, and the calm diction presents the speaker’s state of mind, depicting an actual storm as it nears and the metaphorical turmoil the speaker is experiencing. People hear storm warnings, however, as the storm unfolds, one can merely brace themselves since the storm is inevitable and light hope within them.

“Storm Warnings,” true to its literal subject matter, possesses flowy sweeping syntax created by the strategic use of commas and phrasing to draw parallels between the physical oncoming winds and the gales of life. The author crafts a long run-on sentence that spans the first stanza and carries on into the latter portion of the second to mirror the continuous flowing of windy weather and the forward motion of life. Once the speaker notices the brewing storm, they “walk from window to closed window, watching boughs strain against the sky.” In this portion of the affromented run-on sentence, alliteration, rhythm, and the repetition of words all contribute to the impression of movement. The various “w” sounds at the beginnings of words and the repetition of the word “window” create a sensation of continuously flowing forward, especially when read aloud; the comma adds a small swirling pause to the rhythm, which is then soon after resumed with the word “watching.” Just as the poem rhythmically moves forward with its long phrases connected with frequent commas, so must life carry on with each additional experience, whether it be misfortunes or joys. The elongated syntax allows all these elements to work together within sentences to highlight the similarities between physical storms and emotional struggle and to stress the inevitability of predicaments in life.