Poetry from Linda Thomas and Joan Didion on The Santa Ana Wind

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

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 then describes the speed and how the brush fires work. Then she moves into her message about how people should not build in the chaparral zone as there is a chance of it being burned down by the brush

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

The author of Brush Fire establishes a soothing and poetic tone. Thomas’s choice of words and the diction of the essay reveals this. Throughout Thomas’s essay, she views the wildfires in Santa Ana as “an amazing sight” and “gorgeously beautiful.” “On this evening, neighbors have arrived, too, their dogs and children in tow. Some have brought soft drinks. Most have cameras...” (Thomas). Thomas describes her neighbors admiring the wildfires to show how others also glamorize something destructive. On the other hand, The Santa Ana has more serious and dramatic tone. Instead of viewing the wildfires as beauty, Didion shares her experience as “uneasy” and “makes people unhappy.” In Didion’s essay, she mentions how the Santa Ana wildfires are destructive and creates a depressing atmosphere to the area. She also includes statistics of where and when the wildfires struck the southern parts of California. Both Didion and Thomas’s choices of words are used in order to demonstrate the tone they are attempting to convey, whether the Santa Ana winds were sinister or graceful

She says, “Surgeons are said to watch the wind because blood doesn't clot normally during Foehn”(Didion). When she says this, she builds credibility by using a trusted person in this case a surgeon to prove her statement that Santa Ana changes behavior in someone. She also states that an “Israeli physicist discovered that not only during such winds, but for the ten or twelve hours which precede them, the air carries an unusually high ratio of positive to negative ions.”(Didion) The use of a “Physicist” makes readers believe that the wind changes people’s mind and behavior because physicist are professionals that study the behavior of the material Universe. Didion make her statement credible by appealing to

The points of comparison these two writers share are that they were both iconic poets of their day and that they wrote in what is referred to as “black dialect.” The differences between them are their cultural and educational backgrounds.

Rosemary Dobson's Poetry "Rosemary Dobson seems intent on presenting a view of life as bleak and generally uninteresting In the poems by Rosemary Dobson it generally presents the view of life as bleak. " The Tiger" is an example of this. This also reinforces the limitations on her poetic inspirations. The idea is presented by the effective use of imagery, tone, sound devices and the temporary progression.

The natural environment of the south is often portrayed as one of thick, slow-moving tranquility. In the south the air is heavy and sweet and the days are shown to be peaceful, steady, and humid. However, the south is not always in a state of repose. Chaos, on occasion, will disrupt the calmness. Hurricanes, a rapid, volatile force, always loiter at the gate of southern stillness, threatening the natural way of life. Causing mass flooding, heavy, relentless rain, and fierce winds, these storms are often detrimental to the Atlantic south. In Zora Neale Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, many natural aspects of southern life are explored to symbolize the personal growth, aspirations, and

Primarily the idea of limitation or confinement is presented as the story begins: "the high gray-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest

In Tom’s situation, him, his family, and many others were forced out of their home and land in Oklahoma due to drought and erosion caused from up to 10,000 foot high dusty winds. They set out for California with the hope that they would be able to reclaim their self-esteem and self-respect.

In “Los Angeles Notebook,” Didion gives the readers a slice of Los Angeles. She talks to the readers by showing them. A sentence from her excerpt in “The Art of Fact” reads, “Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse and, just as reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, Accenture its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are (Art of Fact, pg. 482).” In this part of her excerpt she showed the reader how the wind reflects the nature of Los Angeles life. Throughout the rest of the excerpt she inserts dialogue to allow the readers to get a sense of the culture. Unlike Thompson, Didion remains a fly on the wall. She listens and analyzes the people around

It’s in our nature to assume wildfires will just go away, but for a Native American the values are different. Especially when it comes to their land burning, Natives have always thought of the land as sacred and a gift from the creator. In social environments it’s normal to assume that land is used for farming, trees are used for paper, and land is used for building on. As one basic concept for all, the thought of land burning means the loss of values. “The blackened tree stumps stand out against a clear blue sky. The land burned, and there is a smell of charcoal and ash in the air. People in the area are used to wildfires, but as California and much of the western US endures its fifth year, residents are wondering when there will be any respite from the flames and smoke” (Kieran Cooke). It shouldn’t have to become a normal thing to hear about wildfires. Conditions like these

In the opening of the novel The Street, author Ann Petry carefully establishes the bitterness and stressfulness between Lutie Johnson’s, and her relationship with her environments’ urban setting. Petry develops this relationship through the use of imagery, personification, selection of detail, and figurative language. With the use of imagery Petry establishes the stressfulness in which the wind causes between her, and the pedestrians around her. In the beginning of the opening Petry commences her first paragraph with a lengthy sentence which causes a stressfulness in a reader's breathing; similar to the way in which the wind causes in a person’s breathing.

The second type of the pastoral is literature that "describes the country with an implicit or explicit contrast to the urban."[3]