Literary Techniques Used In Joan Didion's Los Angeles Notebook

In Joan Didion’s, “Los Angeles Notebook,” Didion utilizes an uneasy tone to characterize the Santa Ana winds. Her choice of words creates an uncanny feel to the text which gave a description to the life people in Santa Ana live. The Santa Ana winds changed the behaviors of people it touched, made people act differently, and even took a toll on the residents’ health. Didion’s usage of many stylistic elements such as syntax, diction, and figurative language greatly contributed to her essay, in the sense that it provided many concepts and ideas to her writing that it wouldn’t have had otherwise. Didion’s usage of syntax added to the type of language she built throughout her essay. She includes an element of surprise or suspense to captivate the reader’s attention by writing mesmerizing lines such as, “the Pacific turned ominously glossy during a
Didion uses imagery to create realistic, mental images of the things that take place when these perilous winds come. The method of imagery is best conveyed in, “My only neighbor would not come out for days and there were no lights at night, and her husband roamed the place with a machete” and “the Indians would throw themselves in the sea then the bad wind blew.” These descriptions make an authentic picture in our minds, which perceive the life of the people who had no choice but to live through the winds. Her vison of her insane neighbor with a machete represented the madness the winds really caused to the town. Didion also utilized another literary technique, symbolism, to identify the “meek little wives” because it showed that the husbands were usually the powerful ones in the relationship instead of the other way around. The winds seemed to have transferred power to the wives, even with intentions of murder. “Anything can happen,” which now creates the impression that many more insane things can take