Joan Diion S Description of the Santa Ana Winds in the Opening Paragraphs of Her Los Angeles

Joan Didion’s description of the Santa Ana winds in the opening paragraphs of her Los Angeles Notebook” characterize the winds s being related to an irrational and primal human fear. SHE does this through a tense description of the winds, replete with ominous imagery a record of the bizarre behavior of his neighbors during the winds, and with an only half understood scientific explanation of the winds which has the feel more of a frightening folk-myth than of a rational scientific discourse

All throughout the text, but most especially in the first paragraph, Didion uses extravagant imagery (IMAGERY IS A RHETORICAL DEVICE – her assertion) to give the reader a feel of primordial fear. The first paragraph sets up the essay with a mood of ominous expectancy. Phrases like “unnatural stillness” create a calm-before-the-storm effect, and she early on relates the winds, which are of course, a natural occurrence, even further with the earth. ( THESE WERE HER EXAMPLES – evidence) She does this by using the almost-subconscious, animal-like reactions of people to the wind: “the baby frets. The maid sulks.” (line 11) and by stressing the environmental nature of the storms. The net effect is to create a slowly building tension in the reader. (HERE IS THE COMMENTARY)

Didion slowly increases the tension and turns It into a bestial, irrational fear. NEW ASSERTION This is done primarily through descriptions( RHETORICAL DEVICE – description )of Didion’s neighbor’s strange actions during the winds. Although the ominous descriptions of nature continue, they become more irrational and primordial. For instance, in another calm-before-the-storm an passage (20-24), Didion increases the irrational tension by reporting not a quiet fear, but the piercing cry of Peacocks in teh olive tree. The entire essay takes an dream-like aspects. As evidenced in the line “the heat was surreal” (line 29) irrationality and animal fear have become a mainstay of this work. THESE WERE THE EXAMPLES OF EVIDENCE The stories of persons behaving like animals, i.e. the neighbor with the machete, the murderous wife creates a sense of the bestial, reasonless side of human nature being brought out by the Santa Ana winds. COMMENTARY

The following scientific explanation of the winds does nothing to lessen the tension. Because the winds are only partially understood by science, it is not a case of the rational intruding on the irrational. Instead, scientific documentation of the effects of the foehns worldwide lends a credence to the story and pruparts the science admits the existence of the unnatural occurrences, but is unable to effectively explain them. The sentence “No one seems to know exactly why that should be” (58-59) suggests that science instead of disproving the folk-wisdom of the foehn as being nothing but superstition, accepts their existence and leaves them unexplained, irrational forces of a primordial earth.