What Is The Mood Of Los Angeles Notebook By Joan Didion

Stoker contrasts the calm skies with the storm to foreshadow that evil is arriving in Whitby. The day is described lightly with “Splendidly coloured clouds”(84) but later “absolute blackness”(84) approaches with the storm. The colour black is a symbol of evil that is seizing control over Whitby. The storm conjures up emotions of unease as it creates “ discord in the great harmony of nature’s silence”(85). Once again Stoker further emphasizes how nature is being completed destructed:“The whole aspect of nature at once became convulsed”(85). The strong connotation implies the disruption is supernatural. These quotations also provide imagery which further emphasize the supernatural interference of nature.

With the use of emotion, Didion is able to describe the horrifying causes the Santa Ana has on human behavior through murders and horrible wind conditions. “On the first day

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

In Ann Petry’s novel The Street, the wind plays the fundamental adversary, who purposely plays a violent and dangerous force. Through the use of imagery and personification, Petry successfully illustrates the relentless nature of the cold wind, further complementing Lutie Johnson’s auditory experience and strong-willed character. By using specific imagery, Petry portrays the harshness and brutality of the cold that the protagonist is forced to overcome in her endeavor for a home. For instance, the presence of the “cold November wind” becomes overly evident on 116th street as it is enveloped in a chaotic and turbulent state. Trash is flying everywhere, chicken and pork bones are on the curb.

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.

Joan Didion’s essay, “Los Angeles Notebook,” describes the Santa Ana winds and the negative effects it has on people worldwide. Didion’s use of descriptive imagery, enigmatic tone, and passionate selection of detail helps depict her views on the mysterious Santa Ana winds. Through Didion’s essay of the Santa Ana winds, Didion develops an enigmatic tone through her dicktion and connotation. An example of her tone could be found in line one, paragraph one, “...something uneasy... some unnatural stillness, some tension.”

The Santa Ana winds obviously mean a great deal to Didion and Thomas which is why they regard it as sort of a powerful force in nature. In The Santa Ana by Joan Didion, the wind is portrayed as a force that deprives people of happiness. This concept is highlighted when she states that “ to live with the Santa Anna is to accept . . . a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.” In Brush Fire by Linda Thomas, it is portrayed more like a normal power of nature. Her concept is highlighted when she brings up the fact that the chaparral plant burns due to the winds but then it returns in the spring which symbolizes regrowth. Throughout their essays, both authors use diction as well as syntax to persuade their perspective audiences.

Well-known essayist and writer, Joan Didion, in her essay, The Santa Ana, acknowledges the Santa Ana winds and the effects they have on human behavior. Writing poems, stories, and essays for twenty five years, Linda Thomas, in her essay, Brush Fire, addresses the Santa Ana winds and the beauty it has on nature and the devastating disaster it has on human construction. Didion’s purpose is to inform her readers how the winds themselves influence the way people act. Thomas’s purpose is to arouse her readers on the beneficials of the Santa Ana winds on nature. Didion adopts an anxious tone in order to specify to her readers that the winds are catastrophic and their effects are inevitable. Thomas, however, adopts an ambivalent tone to convey to

In contrast, Didion wants to convey a message about the absolute darkness of the winds. Therefore, Didion starts off with the uneasiness of the people and how they can feel it coming. She then uses about seven scientific facts to explain the cynical effects of the winds and then move on to a dreadful fourteen days. Structured this way, Didion focused on just the negatives of the winds, conveying her

By taking away the ability to see, to walk, and then most violently the ability to breathe, the wind insists on being a hazard to all the people in the city, taking away the basic senses a person needs to function. Additionally, Ann Petry uses personification to indicate the hostility of the setting and describe how Lutie persists despite it. For example, when “the wind lifted Lutie Johnson’s hair away. She shivered as the cold fingers of the wind touched the back of her neck”. This describes how the wind has become so hostile that it is personified as an antagonist, going so far as to “explore” Lutie, making her so uncomfortable that she “suddenly felt naked and bald.”

The author uses Personification to make Lutie johnson feel uncomfortable by the wind making her body shivered and confuse of what the features of the building are. Petry idea is to show the readers how lonely the streets are and how powerful the wind can be.

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

As I walked, the air of this haunted, dreadful and sorrowful land had sucked the life out of everything and roared as humanity began to disappear. As I carried on walking, I noticed that the small fraction of light was getting smaller and smaller, until it had been engulfed into a think black ash like smoke. Aggressively, the wind walked past the building with its cruddy feeling, blowing away all signs of life. Deeper and deeper into the land was a burning car door. The fire roared and crackled. The roaring and crackling of the burning car door merged with the aggressive air and created the loudest sounds ever heard on land. Growing darker, the skies made me feel nauseous. The fear of not waking up if a human fell asleep towered

Malmar McKnight’s frightening story, “The Storm”, weaves a violent storm and murder together to heighten the horrific fears that engulf Janet Willsom. “The Storm” is a combination of Mother Nature, Janet’s emotions, and her heartbreaking dilemmas. The eerie mood is revealed throughout the story. Figurative language helps the reader bring the story to life in his/ her mind. The author’s use of irony is devolved through Janet’s changed perception of the storm.