Brush Fires By Linda Thomas Analysis

The Santa Ana Winds that whip through Southern California are seemingly a natural event, however their presence has proved to be anything but to the civilians of the area. The character of winds for years has integrated into the culture of Californians, creating not only an emotional but ecological footprint pressed into the lives of thousands during the fall and winter months. Two authors: Linda Thomas and Joan Didion, natives of Southern California, collectively tackle the chronicle of the Santa Ana Winds, however, both share distinct testimonies of their experiences with such a fierce and fiery personality.

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.

Well-known essayist and writer, Joan Didion, in her essay, The Santa Ana, acknowledges the Santa Ana winds and the effects they have on human behavior. Writing poems, stories, and essays for twenty five years, Linda Thomas, in her essay, Brush Fire, addresses the Santa Ana winds and the beauty it has on nature and the devastating disaster it has on human construction. Didion’s purpose is to inform her readers how the winds themselves influence the way people act. Thomas’s purpose is to arouse her readers on the beneficials of the Santa Ana winds on nature. Didion adopts an anxious tone in order to specify to her readers that the winds are catastrophic and their effects are inevitable. Thomas, however, adopts an ambivalent tone to convey to

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.

Didion’s descriptive diction helps readers envision effects of the unusual Santa Ana Winds. She says that, “we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night” which effectively brings to mind thoughts of fires caused by the Santa Ana Winds without having to directly reference them. Later in her essay, she uses small details to emphasize the widespread effects when she

Through the use of figurative language, Didion conveys the ominousness of the Santa Ana winds. She explains that the winds will come “whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio Passes.” The author personifies the winds, causing them to appear more threatening. The foreboding atmosphere of the winds causes a mechanistic and unusual change in people’s behavior. Didion describes how she “rekindle[s] a waning argument with the telephone company.” The threat of the winds causes the author restart an old argument The use of personification characterizes the winds as threatening and shows how the winds alter people’s behavior.

When describing the winds, Didion paints a somber and gloomy picture. “There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air… some unnatural stillness, some tension,” starts the article off with the image of Los Angeles people in a sense of stillness or tense. Didion continues by explaining that the uneasiness is because the Santa Ana winds have arrived. Through the pictures that Didion paints, the reader begins to see the Santa Ana winds as an uncomfortable atmosphere. She then adds, “Blowing up sandstorms out along Route 66… we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night,” further proving the uneasiness that comes with the somber image of Los Angeles. “The baby frets. The maid sulks,” she adds, painting the distressing image of the effect that the Santa Ana has on people. Didion, in trying to show the craziness associated with the Santa Ana

In her essay, Didion uses a very ominous and foreboding tone to convey the topic of the Santa Ana winds. From the very beginning of the essay, the reader is given a feeling that these Santa Ana winds possess a type of evil in them that seem to affect people for the worse. The reader is never allowed to look past the negative effects of the Santa Ana winds. I will explain how Joan Didion does this in the following examples.

Writer , Linda Thomas, in her essay, Brush Fire, discusses the Santa Ana winds experienced in Southern California and how it affects the people and the weather. Well-known essayist , Joan Didion, in her essay, The Santa Ana, describes the winds and the effects it has on the way the people behave. Both Thomas and Didion’s essays have a similar subject and circumstance, the Santa Ana winds but, both essays vary in numerous ways. The details, tone, and how the message is being told are ways in which both essays differ. These essays are an example of one topic being portray through different lights.

     The main theme of Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee is taking a

On the island in Iceland where the volcano erupted, a lot of people didn’t go back, either, but many did. McPhee does a good job of getting the points of view of the people who choose the risk. Some people have no choice—they were born in a threatened place and don’t have the means to move, but others build or buy expensive homes on the slopes of unstable mountains. He finds experts on the geology of the San Gabriels who consciously live right in the path of potential debris flows, as well as real estate agents who blithely talk their way around the risk, reassuring potential buyers more than they ought to be reassured. McPhee’s interest in the human beings involved as well as the earth makes him a great story-teller. A little distractible, a little inclined to collect as many anecdotes as possible, but never dull. He can make alarming and complex scientific material readable without making it any less alarming. The issues are not old. I did a little research before writing this review. People studying the Old River Control structure where the Atchafalaya is being—for now—prevented from capturing the Mississippi still say McPhee’s article that was the basis for this book is the best thing ever written on the topic. Debris flows are still endangering California towns. People still live where nature could cover them up with water, lava or rocks on short notice, and they

In the first paragraph of the passage by Joan Didion, she emplies the Santa Ana winds have a negative effect on people. After her telling us what the winds are, she writes, “The baby frets. The maid sulks.” That automatically tells us the winds don’t only effect the environment, but it has a direct effect on humans. She uses words like, “unnatural stillness,” “uneasy,” and “tension,” to support her attitude toward the winds. Her choice of words sets the tone of the passage very early and continues to support the tone throughout the entire passage. When she decided to write, “To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior,” it seemed to take her tone a step further. Simply

The damage is widespread. For kilometres all to be seen is blackened trunks and shrivelled leaves consumed by the smoky breath of fire. Looking closely, it could be conceived that each individual tree appears scarred; trunks reduced to charcoal, with dying embers glowing incandescently. But after time, the landscape changes. Green shoots poke up through the ground; worming their way towards the sunlight. Ferns tendril from the hollows of blackened trees, bringing life back into a landscape that was made so desolate by the searing flames. The rebirth has begun and these new plants will flourish and form a new, widespread landscape more rich and full of life than its predecessor.

“The Horrific Wreck of the City” says, “I was thrown on my back and the pavement pulsated like a living thing. Around me the huge buildings, looming up more terrible because of the odd dance they were performing wobbled and veered. Crash followed crash and resounded on all sides. Screeches rent the air as terrified humanity streamed out into the open in agony of despair.” Likewise, “The street beds heaved in frightful fashion. The earth rocked and then came the blow that wrecked San Francisco from the bay shore to the Ocean Beach and from the Golden Gate to the end of the peninsula.” These quotes show how destructive the earthquake was because the first one talks about how buildings were crashing down into the streets of San Francisco; and the second quote talks about how San Francisco was wrecked by the rocking of the earth. “Comprehending the Calamity” says, “The spirals of smoke now began to ascend from various places In the business section, and we realized how completely we were at the mercy of fire, with the broken water-mains, and reservoirs perhaps destroyed. The gas and water had been cut off immediately to most of our homes. The electricity was gone too.” Similarly, “Men, met, introduced one another; exchanged business cards of places consumed by the flames,