Analysis of Joan Didion's "The Los Angeles Notebook"

Joan Didion’s essay the “Los Angeles Notebook” conveys her strong negative feelings of the Santa Ana winds using figurative language such as diction, imagery, syntax, structure, tone, and selection of detail.

First off, Didion uses diction such as “uneasy”, and “some unnatural stillness, some tension” to describe the feeling around the city, showing the reader the negativity that the winds bring. Later on in line 26, she describes the Pacific as “ominously glossy”, and the peacocks “screaming”, an “eerie absence of surf”, and “surreal” heat. All these choices of diction show negativity and bad feelings towards the wind.

Didion uses imagery to convey her negative feelings. In line 14, she says that “the baby frets, the maid sulks” to show how people react to the wind subconsciously. Right after in line 15 Didion follows up her statement by her own experience with the telephone company, and how she had to lie down after a “waning argument”. Another example of imagery would be in line 23 where she says “the Indians would throw themselves into the sea when the bad wind blew”. This imagery allows the reader to visualize the severity of the wind, since Indians would rather throw themselves into the sea than be there when the wind is blowing. A third use of imagery is in line 32, where she writes “my only neighbor would not come out of her house for days, and there were no lights at night, and her husband roamed the place with a machete” The visualization of a man “roaming” with a machete shows the paranoia the wind brings to the people. The man is actually trying to defend his home from wind. This seems very strange. A fourth time imagery is used is in line 39 (is also a hyperbole) where the author writes, “meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks”. The Santa Ana wind makes people act out and think irrational thoughts. It is later said “in simplest terms, it makes people unhappy”. The wind is so terrible; it makes women...