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Santa Ana Winds

1) Joan Didion provides a first-hand account of living through the Santa Ana winds in Southern California in her essay "Los Angeles Notebook". She describes the hot, dry winds that blow through canyons and cause damage. 2) Didion uses vivid imagery and details to illustrate what it feels like when the winds occur and the tense atmosphere they create. She notes unusual behaviors in neighbors that the winds seem to bring out. 3) Didion compares the Santa Ana winds to foehn winds in other parts of the world. She explains how foehn winds can cause physiological and psychological effects on people, supporting her view of how the Santa Ana winds affect local residents.

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264 views3 pages

Santa Ana Winds

1) Joan Didion provides a first-hand account of living through the Santa Ana winds in Southern California in her essay "Los Angeles Notebook". She describes the hot, dry winds that blow through canyons and cause damage. 2) Didion uses vivid imagery and details to illustrate what it feels like when the winds occur and the tense atmosphere they create. She notes unusual behaviors in neighbors that the winds seem to bring out. 3) Didion compares the Santa Ana winds to foehn winds in other parts of the world. She explains how foehn winds can cause physiological and psychological effects on people, supporting her view of how the Santa Ana winds affect local residents.

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Sophia Keith Dela Cruz Ong

Mrs. Scharf

APEL

2020 May 17

Santa Ana Winds Rhetorical Analysis Final Revision

Typically occurring between the months of October and March, dry and often hot winds

blow through Southern California toward the coast. Such winds are named “Santa Ana winds”

derived from the Santa Ana Canyons in Orange County, where the winds occur intensely. The

winds can ​often break tree limbs, send unsecured debris flying into windows, raise clouds of dust

and cause wildfires to ignite and spread rapidly. However, these are only some of the things that

are caused by the winds. In Joan Didion’s essay, “Los Angeles Notebook”, she provides a first

hand account on what it’s like to live and survive through the dreaded Santa Ana winds and why

so many people are affected by it through the use of imagery and simile.

In the beginning of the passage, Joan Didion visualizes the events that will soon happen

once the winds start to blow. In a very specific and detailed explanation, Didion illustrates the

Santa Ana winds, calling it “a hot wind from the northeast” that goes down the Cajon and

Gorgonio Passes and blows up “sandstorms out along Route 66”. By giving such an image, she

was able to give her audience an idea on what the Santa Ana winds feel like and why they are

different from regular winds that most experience. She then goes on and explains the eerie

feeling everyone in the neighborhood has: tension. “To live with the Santa Ana is to accept,

consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.” she states. Didion

then lists some events that happen when the winds come; like when her neighbor’s husband
roams around with a machete, it makes the people affected by it somehow different. Once the

winds start to blow, “Anything can happen...That was the kind of wind it was” she said. Given

all of these details, Didion gives her audience a peek on how the winds affect not only her but the

other residents as well.

Joan Didion goes on and provides some other examples of winds from other countries to

use as comparison, also known as simile. Didion went on and said that the Santa Ana is a ​foehn

wind, “like the foehn of Austria and Switzerland and the 40 khamsin of Israel.” she states,

“perhaps the best known of which are the mistral of France and the Mediterranean sirocco”. By

listing some of the known foehns or winds, Didion gives her audience an idea on what kind of

winds the Santa Ana winds are. After doing so, she then continues and explains how foehns

affect people. Some examples of said effects are headaches, nausea, and allergies about

“nervousness [or] depression”. Not only that, but in worst cases like in the country of

Switzerland, “the suicide rate goes up during the foehn, and in the courts of some Swiss cantons

the wind is considered a mitigating circumstance for crime.” Clearly proving that Foehns like

Santa Ana affect their residents anatomically. Providing such information to her audience,

Didion fully explains why such behaviors that were mentioned earlier in the passage happen.

This being said, the Santa Ana winds clearly affect its residents terribly and result in some of the

events that Didion mentioned in the beginning.

All in all, Joan Didion accurately described and compared the Santa Ana winds to the

extent of persuading her audience that the Santa Ana winds affect them terribly and why she

thinks it happens. By describing her surroundings in detail, Didion was able to give her audience

a picture and a view of what it’s like when they go through the winds. Lastly, by describing that
the Santa Ana winds are foehns and what foehns are, she was able to smoothly introduce the idea

of what might have caused all the strange behaviour of her neighbors during the winds.

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