Analysis Of The Los Angeles Notebook

Meaning/Main Idea - The meaning of Joan Didion’s The Los Angeles Notebook may seem like it is only about the foehn. While this may hold true when the passage is read at face value, further analysis shows that due to the very abstract language, she is shooting for a deeper meaning. This deeper meaning is shown when she mentions that living in Santa Ana exposes her to a “deeply mechanistic view of human behavior” (paragraph 1). This changes the meaning of the whole passage from describing the foehn to expressing the mechanical aspects of human behavior that are shown due to the wind. These mechanistic behaviours vary from how the everyone she meets knows that the wind is coming (paragraph 1) to the strange behaviour of her neighbors (paragraph

She starts the essay by broadly describing the supernatural and odd effects of the winds. While doing this, she is using an ominous tone, so all the reader knows is that some wind comes and makes people uncomfortable. As the essay progresses, the description of the wind also progresses. In the second paragraph, the audience is shown the effects of the wind, yet the name of the wind is still not revealed. Finally, in the middle of the third paragraph Didion reveals the name of the wind, the foehn, and describes why it does what it does. This broad to narrow structure is what also gives the essay such an ominous tone. This allows the reader to make up what they think causes this, while slowly revealing what actually is. Her purpose of informing the reader is completed because the information about the wind is still revealed, just in a more dramatic way. It also helps her implicit purpose of entertainment because the slow build up and uneasiness from the slow build up keeps the reader hooked and entertained, since they don’t know the reason that this is happening right

For the first two paragraphs, ominous and abstract diction, such as “uneasy”, “ominously”, and “roamed” is used to describe “the victim's” feelings towards the wind (paragraphs 1-2). This creates a tense, uneasy tone that hints towards the idea that the winds are supernatural. Her diction changes as the third paragraph progresses. Here, it goes from supernatural tone to one of well researched analysis. This is assisted by the use of specific terms like “foehn”, “surgeons”, and “ions”, which are words that are not ominous, but specific and scientific. It is also a turn in tone from the mystical “folklore” paragraphs into ones that are not speculative. The overall mood of the remains ominous and uneasy, despite the fact that the cause of everybody’s discomfort is disclosed to some degree at the end. Because this disclosure is not very thorough and people’s reactions are so strange, the mood stays the same as the tone of the first two