Joan Didion's Los Angeles Notebook

In “Los Angeles Notebook”, Joan Didion depicts a wind named Santa Ana as an alarming and unnatural figure that disturbs the daily life of the people in Los Angeles. Didion implies the fear and disorder caused by Santa Ana through illustrative words that enhance the imagery of chaos. One imagery evokes an image of fire by only using the words “smoke” and “sirens”. Although these words by itself do not produce any significant meaning, when placed in a sentence like “we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night”, the words are quickly associated with fire. The smokes represent the black fire rising from the fire and the sirens represent the police and firefighters rushing to the scene. With the word “night” contrasting the