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On morality joan didion purpose
On morality joan didion purpose
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Joan Didion’s description of various experiences with the Santa Ana winds conveys her message through various rhetorical strategies. Early in the essay the feeling of worry and anxiety is introduced by the use of words such as “uneasy” , “unnatural stillness” , and “tension”. Because the emotion is described early on the audience can grasp this feeling those who live and Santa Ana are experiencing. This feeling causes people to act abnormal, even when they have no awareness it is coming. Additionally the suspenseful emotion continues through the use of imagery, to convey the unusual effect the winds have on the atmosphere. Didion describes the sky, having a “yellow cast” and screaming peacocks in “the olive trees… by the eerie absence of surf”.
In the nonfiction novel The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson uses imagery, tone, and figurative language to portray the dreamlike qualities of Chicago and the beauty that lies within this city. Larson’s use of imagery causes the reader to picture the beautiful landscape of the fairgrounds before the fair becomes, which might make the reader wish they were apart of this scenery. Larson emphasizes people will see things they “have never seen before”. Like a “broad body of water extending into the horizon” (55) , making the reader feel as if
Florence Kelley was a social and political reformer that fought for woman’s suffrage and child labor laws. Her speech to the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association initiated a call to action for the reform of child labor laws. She explains how young children worked long and exhausting hours during the night and how despicable these work conditions were. Kelley’s use of ethos, logos, pathos, and repetition helps her establish her argument for the reform of the child labor laws.
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.
The main idea or concept of Didion’s “The Los Angeles Notebook” is to portray how human behavior and thought is a result of mechanics. Didion describes the Santa Ana winds as the omnipotent force that pulls humans to their mechanical nature. Los Angeles residents feel the arrival of the “bad wind” and succumb to the paranoia. Didion pairs a story of indians committing suicide to escape the wind with descriptions of the ominous changes that occur in the atmosphere during a Santa Ana to establish a mood of foreboding. After painting a Santa Ana as a paranormal force, Didion concludes to explain the science behind its “supernatural influence” on LA residents. She states that in the case of a Santa Ana, science can prove folk wisdom. The Santa Ana appears as a hot dry wind and whenever one occurs, doctors report patients with frequent “headaches, nausea and allergies, about nervousness and depression” (Didion 3). The excessive amount of
Yet as all younglings do, the hurricane drifted away from its progenitors. Borne upon its own winds, the hurricane whirled westward at speeds between 12 and 15 miles per hour (Longshore). It was like a newborn foal discovering its legs for the first time and thus altogether too eager to move of its own volition. A sense of wanderlust for the world infused the entity’s essence.
Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” has long been acclaimed as a fascinating exemplar of Naturalism, generating many studies that range from the indifference of Nature to the “psychological growth of the men through the experience” (466). The psychological growth happens to every man on the boat, yet is mostly depicted through the voice of the Correspondent and in the form of his questioning and contemplating their desperate situation. Being a correspondent, who is innately able as well as inclined to interpret and communicate ideas, the Correspondent is singled out to articulate the mind of his three fellowmen and of Stephen Crane himself, should the story be seen partly as a journalistic account of his own adventure. Therefore throughout the story, the Correspondent takes the mediating role between the men and the outside world, combines a spokesperson with an interlocutor, and reflects the men’s growing awareness to the indifference of Nature.
The wind becomes almost human like from its physically described features-- such as its hands-- that seemingly reach out to others as they pass by. Violently blowing through the street, the winds actions are given strong diction, such as “pried,”
Throughout Kate Chopin’s short story “The Storm,” readers see how the storm acts as a catalyst to the love affair between the main characters. It causes all of the events in the story to happen through perfect timing and perfect placement. She uses imagery through the storm to express the underlying feelings and emotions behind each characters thoughts; this is what makes the story so intriguing. I am going to focus on the two main characters Calixta and Alcee in this story since they are the ones that are affected by the storm the most. For an overview of background information: Alcee and Calixta are long lost lovers from awhile back that just happen to meet up again on a random stormy day coincidently through several moments of luck. The catch is that both of them are now happily married with kids to separate people, and they seem to still have some sexual tension between them. The imagery used to portray this epic and forbidden love escapade is deep, perfect for the mood of the short story.
“…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
After using subtle diction to indicate a deeper metaphorical context to the Santa Ana winds, the reader can effectively understand the power of intuition because the different responses to the Santa Ana winds are analogous to the way people cope with premonitions and unspoken fear. The winds caused the “Indians [to] throw themselves into the sea when the bad wind blew,” and Didion’s neighbor would decidedly respond to the winds by carrying a “machete.” Referring back to the conceptualization of the winds, the Indians running into the sea and the neighbor carrying a machete imply that there are several methods of responding to uncertainty. Didion implies that human instinct can cause people to respond in unique ways, and in order the characterize the tension between acting out of intuition or “cutting losses,” Didion adds a visually riveting image of a beating “surreal” “heart.” The human heart in the middle of a scene of conflict and force reinforces
The forces of nature not only shape the world around us, they also wriggle into our minds. In their essays, Brush Fire and The Santa Ana Winds, Didion and Thomas describe the indomitable power of the Santa Ana phenomenon, a time when warm dry winds breathe flame into the hills surrounding the city of angels. Much like certain chaparral of the southern California Hills the texts spring from the same root - both texts speak to the immeasurable and awesome power of this meteorological event, sharing similarities in vivid diction and, at times, imagery. In spite of these surface level parallels, however, these two texts branch off away from each other when it comes to the purpose, tone, syntax - both authors have vastly different messages to
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.
With the approach of the Spanish Armada, Queen Elizabeth and England await an invasion force of the most powerful kingdom in Europe. With her fiery rhetoric and bold manner, Elizabeth injects her soldiers with the reassurance they need to fight a terrible enemy.
Nat now had applied accordion hurricane shutters on the windows, that he found in the market that supplied with such items knowing there might be a storm. Nat had to travel extra miles to get food from the city. He didn’t get too much knowing that the time was limited for him to get back. On one regular day, Nat’s wife was teaching the kids with the regular tapping of the beaks and flapping of feathers the wife got irritated.
The sunset was not spectacular that day. The vivid ruby and tangerine streaks that so often caressed the blue brow of the sky were sleeping, hidden behind the heavy mists. There are some days when the sunlight seems to dance, to weave and frolic with tongues of fire between the blades of grass. Not on that day. That evening, the yellow light was sickly. It diffused softly through the gray curtains with a shrouded light that just failed to illuminate. High up in the treetops, the leaves swayed, but on the ground, the grass was silent, limp and unmoving. The sun set and the earth waited.