Compare And Contrast The Santa Ana And Brush Fire

On March 6,2017, the Panhandle of Texas caught on fire. The wildfire had burned over 500,000 acres of land. Most of this land includes livestock and feed for livestock. Several people had died during this traumatic event, because they were trying to save their livestock and land Cortana (2017). The wildfires burning in Texas can be seen from space, they are that huge Cortana (2017).

“ 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 theme of William Faulkner’s Barn Burning was the idea of "the old fierce pull of blood." In Barn Burning the two main characters are the dad, Abner, and the son, Sarty. Abner was a barn burner and Sarty was an accomplice because he always defended his dad due to the theme of “blood and family.” At the beginning of the story, Sarty smells something besides food in the store.

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 uses a lot of figurative language throughout the story. The forceful wind is compared to a dog shaking a rat between its teeth. As Janet tried to calm herself, the idea that a dead woman was in the basement of her house began to beat at her like a flail. The idea that she was frozen with freight was illustrated by her body being like a drawn bow. Examples of more figurative language can be found throughout the text.

Imagery is used to portray the themes of For the fire by John Foulcher and The surfer by Judith Wright by a variation of literary techniques and contrasting imagery types such as natural, animal and sensory.

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.

Both writers approach the topic of the Santa Ana winds very differently, although they both wish to inform different people about the effects of the winds. Each author has a different point of view and purpose than the other. Didion wanted to write

The Santa Ana winds. They travel from the northeast and tear up Southern California, causing devastating fires that are able to spread at a fast rate. While researching this, these Santa Ana winds are dangerous. These winds are destructive, take many lives, and affect the lives of people in Southern California who have to deal with this. Both authors take these winds to the next level, using rhetorical devices to build their essays and having completely different tones and viewpoints. Still, they end up having similarities that contribute to the overall text.

On July 10, 2001 four U.S Forest Service Firefighters died while battling the thirty mile fire. Six others injured including two hikers. The thirty mile fire was the second deadliest fire in Washington state history.

Along with sensory details, Rawlings’ practical use of figurative language largely helped her to win a Pulitzer Prize for her astonishing work on this novel. The figurative language used, aids in bringing life to the story through devices such as comparisons and exaggerations. For instance, on page six, the novel reads, “The bubbling spring would rise forever from the earth, the thin current was endless”. The spring cannot rise forever and the thin current can end. Here, the author uses hyperboles to exaggerate the details, and to show the importance of the ideas.Another instance, is on page two hundred and twenty four when the sound of the air is brought  up, “A great roaring sounded in the distance. All the bears in the scrub, meeting at the river, might make such a roaring”. This description uses a simile, comparing the wind roaring to the sound of a group of bears. This allows a better awareness of the degree of the noise. Rawling could have said the wind roared but by adding the detail, she creates more depth in her portrayal of Jody’s experiences. On page two hundred and twenty four there is another example of figurative language, where personification being used, “In the night, a gust of wind moved through and slammed both doors”. This is very helpful in Rawlings creating a great piece of work because it breathes life into the wind and in that moment gives the

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 “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

By using sight as a sense, fire has risen in the middle of the story. Specifically, the meaning of fire itself, is something being burned, or is going to be burned. In the same way, fire also spreads drastically everywhere. As it states in the book, “He saw a red light before him, as when the felled trunks and branches of a