Brush Fire Analysis

In 2003, possibly one of the worst wildfires in California’s history occurred. This fire, referred to as the Cedar Fire, spread across 273,246 acres.

Joan Didion in her essay, “The Santa Ana” and Linda Thomas in her essay, “Brush Fire” describes the Santa Ana in two opposing stands with similar moves. Didion's purpose in writing her essay for the Santa Ana is to inform her readers. She informs them about the Santa Ana, the effect the winds have on human behavior, and how they have to live with the Santa Ana. Thomas writes her essay to engage readers on the Santa Ana’s effect on brushes. She gives details on how the Santa Ana causes natural brush fires and the beauty it is able to create in the aftermath.

Text’s author and title/ comment? "Brush fire" by Linda Thomas. It talks about the beauty that comes with the Santa Ana winds and how it affects the brush fires. Consider the rhetorical situation. What circumstances bring this text forward? What is its audience?

The hayman fire is the biggest fire in recorded history burning 138,000 acres. The fire has had long lasting damages on the environment. There were many factor that added up that created a dangerous situation where the area was very fire prone. Though the fire was believed to be started by a woman burning a letter but the forest had the right conditions to generate a massive fire.

Both writers use immense amounts of imagery to describe the Santa Ana Winds. Since Santa Ana is believed to be a terrifying wind, each author used imagery to either prove or refute the terror. Thomas proved the beauty in Southern California that occurred because of

Didion personifies the wind as almost an unknown epidemic. Similar to when an unknown disease goes viral, all walks of life are affected. Didion clearly states how teachers, students, doctors, to physicists, to generally everyone becomes unhappy and uncomfortable during the winds. She does not write of how the wind caused fire to ravage the shrublands, but she writes of the symptoms it inflicts on the people. Didion mentions all the after effects of the wind and the harm it can do like inflict paranoia. She mentions how the fear-stricken victims of southern California are paranoid like her neighbor that refuses to leave the house and her husband who roams with a machete. Didion’s personification of the wind focuses on a fearful and distant light.

Joan Didion’s essay, “Los Angeles Notebook,” describes the Santa Ana winds and the negative effects it has on people worldwide. Didion’s use of descriptive imagery, enigmatic tone, and passionate selection of detail helps depict her views on the mysterious Santa Ana winds. Through Didion’s essay of the Santa Ana winds, Didion develops an enigmatic tone through her dicktion and connotation. An example of her tone could be found in line one, paragraph one, “...something uneasy... some unnatural stillness, some tension.”

The Santa Ana winds obviously mean a great deal to Didion and Thomas which is why they regard it as sort of a powerful force in nature. In The Santa Ana by Joan Didion, the wind is portrayed as a force that deprives people of happiness. This concept is highlighted when she states that “ to live with the Santa Anna is to accept . . . a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.” In Brush Fire by Linda Thomas, it is portrayed more like a normal power of nature. Her concept is highlighted when she brings up the fact that the chaparral plant burns due to the winds but then it returns in the spring which symbolizes regrowth. Throughout their essays, both authors use diction as well as syntax to persuade their perspective audiences.

She creates a dramatic tone in order to convey to her readers that the winds have a mechanistic effect on people. Thomas’s purpose points towards the positives

Throughout the passage, Didion uses a malevolent tone to show the wind’s ferocious effect on her and on the people of Los Angeles. She is negative towards the winds but has good reasons to be so. She uses words like “mechanistic”, “ominously”, “surreal”, “frets”, and “unnatural” to describe the loathing that many feels during the Santa Ana winds. Continuing the use of an unsettling tone, she uses more words like “tension”, “eerie”, and “absence”. Didion wants the readers to feel the intensity of the surroundings during these winds by using adjectives that have a specific connotation to them.

Joan Didion uses pathos to argue that Santa Ana causes people to have weird behaviors. When Joan uses the example that the “Indians would throw themselves into the sea,”(Didion) she creates the emotion of sadness and shock. Didion chose these emotions to show that the wind makes people do strange actions. She also says that, “every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands necks. Anything can happen.”(Didion) She causes a sense of horror using the excerpt from, “On nights like that” by Raymond Chandler. It gives a sense of horror because it shows how far the wind can make people do bad actions when the wind blows. Joan Didion incorporates

Imagine a talking spider, who with the help of his wife, goes on an adventure to collect creatures to bring to a sky god so they can get his stories. The spider, Anansi, wants these stories so he can give them to society and memorize them himself. Imagine now, a coyote, and his uncle who is a god, Thunder, playing dice. If coyote wins, he gets Thunder’s fire, if he loses than Thunder gets to kill him. Both these trickster tales have things in common along with things not in common with each other.

Thomas, a California native, describes the Santa Ana brush fires in a more excited and astonished tone. Since she is a native, she decides not to display her experiences to the reader in a factual way. Instead, she writes more informally, and uses techniques such as word choice and imagery to display the beauty that she sees. “The condition is perfect for fire that can rush up a canyon like a locomotive, roaring and exploding brush as it rages.” While describing a particularly hot and dry spring, Thomas uses both imagery and simile to depict the fiery winds as a train rushing over the brush. She does not only make this comparison for dramatic effect to entice the reader, but she also does it because she sees the

To begin with, I believe that there was more than one conflicts in the story. The conflicts were man vs. nature, man vs. self, man vs. man, and man vs. society. Mattie acquired all of these conflicts throughout the novel. To describe the conflict of man vs. nature, it is explained that the fever had spread through the air and it was up to Mattie to save herself from the disease. She had to “fight” nature and protect herself from the heat as well as the fever until winter arrived. Mattie also fought with herself when she had to decide to give Nell up to the orphanage or keep her in her own hands. Mattie also shows man vs. society as she defended the intruders breaking in the coffeehouse. Man vs. man is explained in the novel when Mattie would argue about doing her chores and going to Polly’s funeral in the

Barn Burning is a story by William Faulkner, a native of Oxford, Mississippi. The story starts off in a small town court which is also a store. Mr. Harris who owns a barn, is blaming Mr. Snopes for burning down his barn. The judge asks Mr. Harris what proof he has, but he doesn’t have proof that he actually did it. Instead he thinks Mr. Snopes has it out for him because one time Mr. Snopes hog got out in Mr. Harris cornfield. He demands a dollar for his return, but instead Snopes sent someone to get it and warned him that wood is capable of catching fire. And that night Harris barn caught on fire. But this isn’t enough to convict him of this. But this doesn’t stop Mr. Harris, he calls Mr. Snopes son to see what he knows. Nothing happens, but the judge wants Mr. Snopes to leave because he has had nothing but trouble. The family heads home and later that night Mr. Snopes wakes his son Sartoris and claims that he was going to throw him under the table and say he did it. The family then settles in a new location, where they will work for Major de Spain. Snopes being the person he is, walks into Major's house with mud on his boots making a mess. Later that day Snopes is asked to clean the rug he pretty much destroyed. Snopes cleans it like someone that has never cleaned before, making it worse. He returns the rug and the next day is confronted by Major. Major wants to be payed for his destroyed rug. Snopes denies paying and is taken to court. He loses in court and this makes him very mad. Snopes then tries to burn down Majors barn. But Sartoris runs and tells Major. Major comes and kills Snopes before he could do any damage.