Didion, a Los Angeles local, encounters an “uneasy” feeling during her time of writing, and she directly identifies this as a foreboding of, “A Santa Ana… blow.” The winds bring sandstorms which appear as, “Smoke back in the canyons, [and they will] hear sirens in the night. Didion’s eerie view of the Santa Ana winds through her uncomfortable diction and her anecdotal references of past storms. Didion’s diction conveys the “unnatural” feelings gnawing at her insides, which lead her to believe a storm is coming. Not only id there “tension” and “screaming”, but there is this idea that, “Anything could happen,’’ Didion’s disturbed diction creates a rather spooky tone and spirit within the text. The audience can better understand the “eerie absence” in the air because she uses every synonym of eerie possible. Her word choice and the details given imply that she dreads the storm and even more she dreads, “The [baby’s] frets,” and, “The maids [sulking].” She fears the cries and screams so much that it leaves her syntax simple and her mind almost absent. “[She] knows it because [she can] feel it,” with the baby and maid. Her unnatural mood causes her thoughts to be short and fragmented. Didion’s dismayed spirit is shown through her diction of …show more content…
She references, “Doctors [who] hear about headaches and nausea…” People also walk around with a sense of “nervousness” and “depression”. Didion uses anecdotal evidence in order to establish her tone of eeriness and evil omens. The events described allow the reader to understand that Didion’s feelings are true; other people have similar experiences. She establishes a sense od ethics with her given logical appeal to actual cases and weird anecdotes during a Santa Ana blow. She talks about, “Children [who] become unmanageable,” and Indians who throw, “Themselves into the sea,” all to convey the idea that all people are affected; no person is left
His outside actions of touching the wall and looking at all the names are causing him to react internally. He is remembering the past and is attempting to suppress the emotions that are rising within him. The first two lines of the poem set the mood of fear and gloom which is constant throughout the remainder of the poem. The word choice of "black" to describe the speaker's face can convey several messages (502). The most obvious meaning ... ...
Didion paints uneasy and somber images when describing the Santa Ana winds. “There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air… some unnatural stillness, some tension,” starts the essay off with the image of Los Angeles people in a sense of stillness or tense. She further adds, “Blowing up sandstorms out along Route 66… we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night,” propagating the uneasy and stark image of Los Angeles. “The baby frets. The maid sulks,” she adds, giving a depressing view into the effects of the Santa Ana winds on people. Didion, in an attempt to show the craziness associated with the Santa Ana winds, points out the Indians who throw themselves into the sea when bad winds came. At any rate, Didion attempts to show the negative effects of the Santa Ana winds through images of stillness, uneasiness, and sobriety.
Joan Didion uses words such as ‘eerie’, ‘depression’, and ‘unnatural’ bringing an unsettling and serious tone. Didion reflects this uneasiness on the people and how as Santa Ana nears, it affects them. “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. The baby frets. The maid sulks (Didion).” As Santa Ana looms closer the people living in the area get a strange sensation, almost self preparing themselves for the worst. Linda Thomas however describes the atmosphere in a different light. Thomas uses words such as ‘undisturbed’, ‘undamaged’, and ‘natural’ bringing a more casual and normalized tone. “I awoke to air so dry that the graze of my nightgown against the down comforter created tiny orange sparks… And as I make the drive to work, I find myself beneath a smoky sky the color of fire (Thomas).” The self knowing that Santa Ana is there, just like with Didion, but there is no strange feeling present. It is almost as if the presence of Santa Ana is not bothering and
...exico. Cather is considering as a local writer, but she wrote proficiently of imageries and symbolism in her best known works. The novel presents an outstanding opportunity to discuss class members' perceptions of New Mexico, the class structure of small town America in the nineteenth century, the religious and ethnic differences that all come into play in the story. Discussing any of these questions would enhance students' awareness of the complexity that underlies the calm prose style of this story. In New Mexico, O’Keeffe found much similar to her surroundings in New Mexico, but was enthralling by the beauty of the environment she found there. She never felt the urge to travel there repeatedly, being instead fascinating by the environment in New Mexico. Both of them demonstrated symbolism and imagery within their work of art, set in nineteenth century New Mexico.
Ten years have passed but nothing here has changed on the ranch. The scenery is different; the grass is dull and dead, starting to turn brown and shrivelling over, starved from water. The weather is miserable just like my mood I suppose; the clouds are black and full of rain, ready to rupture just like a car tyre. I hear the rumble in the atmosphere like a lion roaring, the wind was howling, it is as if a zoo is being created by the dreadful weather, with the howling and roaring. The wind howling so much it is manipulating the leaves of the brush to make soundless movements. The people may be different here on the ranch but the way in which they treat each other is much the same. As I walk onto the premises’ of the ranch I can smell burnt wood. I notice that the immigrant workers are still doing the worst jobs such as being stable bucks. The only consolation, I suppose, is that the pay is equal no matter what job you do.
Joshua Ferris, the author of the short story, “The Breeze”, closely links seasonal conditions and activities to different lifestyles. Specifically, Joshua links outdoor activities and spring in Manhattan to a life that needs “more adventure” and “thrills”. He also chooses to link indoor places and winter to the picture of a life that is “limited”, “dying” and “misspent”. Light and dark are also used as a binary within this story. What shows the connection between the ideas described is how the author uses repetition and patterns to emphasize his most important details.
Although the author portrays a bitter tone throughout the text, there are many occasions in which there are multiple tones being used at the same time. For instance, when the author was in the ambulance, he was perceived as having a critical tone. He was criticizing and finding fault in what the paramedics and doctors were doing as he began to lose his feeling of personalization. Diction begins to tie into here as it also reflects onto the tone through complex word choice. Once in the hospital, he began to compare the hospital with prison by using a depressed yet confused tone. He compares them by telling the audience about the infamous Tower of London. Sacks became delirious and was unsure of what was going on. Adding such tone entices the audience though the effect of depersonalization on Sacks. However, after being told about the operation, Sacks’ tone went from constrained to incredulous and unsure. He claims of having “hallucinatory vividness” which ties back to the incredulous tone. This tone adds the suspicion to the hospital because such distinctness is not a normal occurrence. As explained, tone plays a crucial role in exemplifying the negative connotation and subject of the passage by using pathos and feelings of the author to reflect in the
During the story the author often uses foreshadowing to give hints to the reader of things that will happen in the future. When the story starts, a storm is coming on a late October night. The storm symbolizes the evil approaching the town. Usually it seems a storm would resemble something dark and evil, because a stormy night is always a classic setting for something evil. At the climax of the story, Charles Halloway reads a passage ...
“…it broke into hundreds of pieces so that the rain fell here and there from high clouds in long, curving gray plumes.” The hyperbole about the storm produces a wild sense of the surroundings. Kingsolver uses the onomatopoeia and simile to describe appearance and the sound of the storm. The first-person point of view also assists on expressing Taylor’s senses and emotions. In describing Taylor’s feelings for Estevan, Kingsolver combines them into a one complex sentence, which displays the exhilaration that Taylor feels. Most of all the paragraphs’ structure is similar, adding consistency to the passage. The consistency makes it easier for the readers to follow and understand the message and concepts that the author conveys in the novel. Additionally, Kingsolver uses contrast to bring out the mood among Taylor’s group. In the beginning, she makes a deadly ambience with the storm and lightning, yet the characters are very high in spirit and energy to a point in which they dance under the storm. It enhances the characters’ emotion to attract the attention of the readers, which makes it more noticeable just like light being brighter in the dark. Kingsolver also uses this passage as a chance to build up for a shocking event unexpected by
“’A storm must have brought it here’. . . ‘Sadly we all looked back at the bird. A scarlet ibis! How many miles it had traveled to die like this, in our yard, beneath the bleeding tree” (154). Hurst is marking his start to illustrate two symbols, the storm and the scarlet ibis. Hurst uses parallel imagery to connect these passages and create the symbols. “The faster I walked, the faster he walked, so I began to run…I went back and found…he had been bleeding from the mouth…the vision in red before me looked very familiar” (155, 157). Hurst is creating parallels between the storm and the narrators pride and the scarlet ibis and Doodle. Hurst illustrates the storm pushing the scarlet ibis to its physical limits and he also illustrates the narrator pushing his brother to his physical limits. The narrator’s is the “storm must have brought it here,” to Doodle because like the storm, the narrator pushed Doodle to his limits. Hurst connects the scarlet ibis and Doodle increasingly throughout the text using the colors, bleeding and red. “The vision in red looked very familiar” (157). Hurst exercised “the storm,” as a symbol for the narrators pride and the ibis as a symbol for Doodle to portray pride as a storm that swept in and devastated the narrator’s
Due to King’s strange and frightening style of writing, the reader is left on the edge since they don't know what to expect when reading the literature of this unusual character. For example, in the text of, “Strawberry Spring”, the story begins in a normal and mellow tone until suddenly a fog hits. The next day the newspapers were drowned with the news that a woman, “had been murdered by her boyfriend”(King, “Strawberry Spring” 2). Accordingly, these actions are very frightening not only because they were unsuspected, but because they were performed by one lover to another. Also, the result of this horrifying incident is what we all dread, and that is death. As a result, this traumatising incident is “daring our nightmares”(King, “Why We Crave Horror, 1). Moreover, this story by King abides by his claim that we all view horror as a way to face our fears, and to show that we are not
Another instance in which his anguish at her abandonment is connoted is when the “house [echoes] with desertion” (Carter 50). Despite the fact that the house is rather grand and is beautifully furnished, there fails to be the reverberations of any sounds that would deem the dwelling alive. Rather, it is only the sounds of emptiness which engulfs the house. Comparatively, the mindset of the Beast is st...
In both ‘Eve Green’ and ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’, the protagonists experience fear in many guises. Although traumatic events in both Eve and Antoinette’s lives do lead to moments of sudden, striking fear, fear is also presented as having the potential to be subtle and muted, and therefore, “haunting”. Fletcher and Rhys seem to suggest that this form of fear is more damaging to the psyche than fear in its more conspicuous manifestations, as it is more deeply intertwined with the characterisations of the protagonists, therefore allowing for the fear to “pervade” the novels. As a result, it could be argued that fear has an almost constant presence in each novel, particularly because fear is seemingly linked to other prominent themes in each novel.
The first half of the poem creates a sense of place. The narrator invites us to go “through certain half-deserted streets” on an evening he has just compared to an unconscious patient (4). To think of an evening as a corpselike event is disturbing, but effective in that the daytime is the time of the living, and the night time is the time of the dead. He is anxious and apprehensive, and evokes a sense of debauchery and shadows. Lines 15-22 compare the night’s fog to the actions of a typical cat, making the reader sense the mystery of a dark, foggy night in a familiar, tangible way. One might suppose that “In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo” refers to a room in a brothel, where the seedy women for hire talk about elevated art between Johns (13). The narrator creates a tension in the image of dark deserted streets and shady activities in the dark.
Mood, the drawing temptation of atmosphere, sets a scene with its spell, curves finely tuned instruments to the senses that draws or repels those who seek to observe. Horror, whether in novelette or on a silver screen, must create these moments of tension in order to provide a wanted experience. In Gothic literature, the words crafted moments of intense feeling, darkened corridors flickering with candlelight, casting leaping shadows onto dim stone, set apart by a deep, penetrating cold that could be felt down to the bones. Scenes began with storms, shows of power, of nature, immediately filling the reader with a cold dread and a level of fright - the characteristic strike of the lightning behind a looming castle upon a hill, cliche now to use - but then! - oh what a staple to the Gothic art. Moods taken from such novels, however, ca...