The Street Ann Petry Analysis

The Santa Ana Winds that whip through Southern California are seemingly a natural event, however their presence has proved to be anything but to the civilians of the area. The character of winds for years has integrated into the culture of Californians, creating not only an emotional but ecological footprint pressed into the lives of thousands during the fall and winter months. Two authors: Linda Thomas and Joan Didion, natives of Southern California, collectively tackle the chronicle of the Santa Ana Winds, however, both share distinct testimonies of their experiences with such a fierce and fiery personality.

The buildings were described as having, “small-paned high windows in the peaks of their steep gables were like knowing eyes,” as to make the infrastructure have human features to look at the narrator and scene around it. When the narrator is with Mrs. Todd and her herbal remedies the humanity of the town grows with the mystical qualities of the herbs as the remedies themselves “whispered directions could be heard as customers passed the windows” and the wind blew by, ““adverse winds at sea might also find their proper remedies.” By personifying the town itself and making it not only the setting, but a character, Jewett deepens the meaning of her excerpt to have a mystical tone and maintain the

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.

It’s known to Lutie that the paper, dust, and grime, does not seem to get in her face and anger her like everyone else. The quote that talks about the newspaper that wraps around their feet and triggers the people, causing them to kick their feet in annoyance toward the paper, is an example of parallelism. The reasoning behind this is that the quote gives detail into what causes the citizens difficulty and trouble. However, there are parts of the given story where only the wind plays a difficult and impenetrable effect on the way it deals people with very hectic trouble, which causes them dismay. For example, when Ann Petry expresses that the wind blew newspaper back again and again, it shows the rhetorical device known as an epizeuxis. This is defined as one word that is repeated for emphasis. This shines the focus on how the wind affects the citizens that are moving throughout the street, as they deal with the pain in their eyes and throat, and changes the way they experience their own environment. The citizens in the urban city definitely have a dismantled

In Ann Petry’s 1946 novel The Street, the author establishes Lutie Johnson’s distant, discouraging, distracted, and finally dominant demeanor to the urban setting mostly through the use of personification.

Petry contrats Lutie and the wind to help reveal Lutie’s personality to the reader. Petry compares the force of the wind to that of a “violent assault”. The wind also caused chaos as it “rattled the tops of garbage cans”, “sucked window shades out” , and “ drove most people off the street”. The use of this imagery helps the reader understand the force of the wind and some of the challenges it posed to those who dared venture outside. The use of imagery

Joan Didion uses pathos to argue that Santa Ana causes people to have weird behaviors. When Joan uses the example that the “Indians would throw themselves into the sea,”(Didion) she creates the emotion of sadness and shock. Didion chose these emotions to show that the wind makes people do strange actions. She also says that, “every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands necks. Anything can happen.”(Didion) She causes a sense of horror using the excerpt from, “On nights like that” by Raymond Chandler. It gives a sense of horror because it shows how far the wind can make people do bad actions when the wind blows. Joan Didion incorporates

Due to this, the family steals food in order to cure their hunger. This shows the theme beacuse it shows that in times of need, sometimes people have to do what is best for themselves instead of thinking about others. The Street also shows the same theme by using the wind as an annoyance to the people in the street, an event in the excerpt. “It wrapped newspaper around their feet entangling them until the people cursed deep in their throats, stamped their feet, and kicked off the paper.” (Petry 2). Due to the wind, the people are inferior and are becoming annoyed with everything that is being thrown at them. This annoyance causes the people the make violent remarks. Because of the wind, the people were forced to do these things even if some of them didn’t want to. Overall, both McCourt and Petry used events to help tell the theme.

When describing the winds, Didion paints a somber and gloomy picture. “There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air… some unnatural stillness, some tension,” starts the article off with the image of Los Angeles people in a sense of stillness or tense. Didion continues by explaining that the uneasiness is because the Santa Ana winds have arrived. Through the pictures that Didion paints, the reader begins to see the Santa Ana winds as an uncomfortable atmosphere. She then adds, “Blowing up sandstorms out along Route 66… we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night,” further proving the uneasiness that comes with the somber image of Los Angeles. “The baby frets. The maid sulks,” she adds, painting the distressing image of the effect that the Santa Ana has on people. Didion, in trying to show the craziness associated with the Santa Ana

Ann Petry’s “The Street” tells the story of Lutie Johnson, a single black mother, who is confronted with continuous injustices in the streets of Harlem. Alone and struggling to make a life for herself and her son Bub, Lutie tells a tale of an African American woman who breaks away from the story of the tragic mulatto. Claiming Benjamin Franklin as her epitome from her experience as a suburban domestic, Lutie faces challenges directly connected to cyclic violence and poverty. From the beginning of the novel Petry subtly shows the overpowering omnipresence surveillance and spectatorship. The surveillance and spectatorship that Lutie experiences shows how it was used to control her movements physically, mentally and socioeconomically.

Elijah Anderson’s novel, Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City, offers the reader a glimpse of what life is like being a black youth living in the inner-city. Living by the “code of the street”, a term Anderson uses to describe the unwritten rules many youth in the inner-city when interacting with others, these young people often find themselves on the destructive path to delinquency. Through a lack of role models, a sweeping change in the global market, the ever enticing underground drug trade, the constant institutional discrimination towards African Americans, and the corruption of the criminal justice system, the people who live by the code of the street become a part of an alienated subculture. Through

The novel The Divine Wind by Garry Disher reflects on values, ideas, experiences and beliefs experienced by Hartley Penrose and his family and friends. Set in Broome, the story follows the characters as they experience the harsh implications of World War 2 and its effect on their lives. Disher reflects on subjects relevant to society today, such as racism and prejudice, friendships and relationships and the importance of family.

Ellen is a housewife and she is always by herself with the baby. While she waits for Paul for lunch she believes they are having an unstable relationship. In the beginning of the story, Ellen becomes lonely as she really wants to feel his arms supporting her. Ellen’s thoughts are shown through the wind when the author tells “At each blast of wind it shook as if to topple and spin hurtling with the dust fell into space” (Ross 64). The wind clearly embraces Ellen as she sees herself not with Paul in the future. She believes Paul and herself having an unstable rough relationship. She thinks that they should understand each other and have their relationship to see Paul coming for lunch she sees two different winds. Ellen views the winds to herself, the wind in fight images her desire to hold back her feelings but the wind that pursued makes her reflect about Paul’s attitude and decision which makes herself angry towards Paul causing their marriage to ruin. Lastly, as the conflict starts when the reader sees the light and shadow between them, Ellen and Paul begin an argument. Ellen believes that they should leave for their baby health but Paul suggests they should stay because it is safe to stay inside from the storm also that he can maintain the farm. Ellen and Paul fight which is causing them to become separate hatred between their relationship. During their argument, Ellen

The speaker references the horrible weather in Santa Ana and how the wind could change the mindset of the people who live there. She describes it as being depressing the type of weather that no one liked yet it effected everyone. She describes the town in a very unearthly manner. She speaks of how the wind in Santa Ana would commonly underestimated because there were so many people from other countries who believed that California’s weather was monotone, meaning that it always stayed the same with no extremes. She expresses her truth that the weather infected the air with violence. Throughout the essay she is uneasy which is shown by her use of mysterious words.

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.