Preview

The Santa Ana By Joan Didion Summary

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
409 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Santa Ana By Joan Didion Summary
For this discussion I decided to write about Joan Didion’s essay, “The Santa Ana. The author starts off by explaining that there is, “Something uneasy with Los Angeles air in the afternoon.” This immediately grabs my attention as I have been to may states and towns and don’t believe I have ever had the feeling of uneasiness or that something was wrong with the air in a given city. Even when in Buffalo the air does not feel any different other than it is cold. The cloud cover does not help either sometimes you can have some menacing looking gray clouds and no snow and other days you get hit with 12 feet of snow in a day or two. They continue to hold the reader’s attention with the vivid descriptions of the Santa Ana when he talks about trying
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Mission San Gabriel: Pedro Cambon and Angel Somera
    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Mission San Gabriel: Pedro Cambon and Angel Somera

    HistoryMission San Gabriel was founded on September 8, 1771 by fathers Pedro Cambon and Angel Somera. The planned site for the Mission was along the banks of the Río de los Temblores (the River of the Earthquakes—the Santa Ana River). The priests chose an alternate site on a fertile plain located directly alongside the Rio Hondo in the Whittier Narrows.[11] The site of the Misión Vieja (or "Old Mission") is located near the intersection of San Gabriel Boulevard and Lincoln Avenue in Montebello, California (known to the natives as Shevaanga). In 1776, a flash flood destroyed much of the crops and ruined the Mission complex, which was subsequently relocated five miles closer to the mountains in present-day San Gabriel (the native settlement of 'Iisanchanga). The Mission is the base from which the pueblo that became the city of Los Angeles, California was sent. On December 9, 1812 (the "Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin"), a series of massive earthquakes shook Southern California. The 1812 Wrightwood earthquake caused the three-bell campanario, located adjacent to the chapel's east façade, to collapse. A larger, six-bell structure was subsequently constructed at the far end of the capilla. While no pictorial record exists to document what the original structure looked like, architectural historian Rexford Newcomb deduced the design and published a depiction in his 1916 work The Franciscan Mission Architecture of Alta California.…

    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Antonio De Lopez Santa Anna Essay
    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Antonio De Lopez Santa Anna Essay

    Have you ever wondered who Santa Anna was? You might have heard his name in history class,but do you know everything about him?…

    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Time And Harrain In The Pacific Northwest By Timothy Egan Summary
    • 617 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Time And Harrain In The Pacific Northwest By Timothy Egan Summary

    In this essay “The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest” Timothy Egan begins his essay by introducing himself that he was born in Seattle and graduated from the University of Washington and he is the Pulitzer Prize. He views Seattle as a new and interesting city which has changed a lot in the last century. Declining hills, losing salmon stream, building new skyscrapers by month, and the forested edge of the city is deforested for new neighborhoods as well. No wonder he describes Seattle as “a city that can’t decide what to wear”(127). He also interprets Seattle…

    • 617 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Virgin Of Guadalupe Poem Summary
    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Virgin Of Guadalupe Poem Summary

    Based on the passage from The Miraculous Apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the main word seemed to be “Her.” It was very interesting to go from reading a poem about a woman who was constantly being oppressed and silenced for her gender (“To a Gentleman of Peru”) to go on to read a story about a man being called to worship a woman. Despite the conflict between the Spanish and the Native Americans, both cultures had similarities regarding their physical traits as well as their treatment of women. At the time, women, in both the Spanish and Native American cultures, were not given then same respect as men. Women were called to be completely submissive to both God and their husbands, and they were discouraged to speak out in public much less hold leadership positions. However, by examining how the narrative describes her physical attributes, it shows that she unifies both the indigenous people and the Spaniards.…

    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Intimate Frontiers by Hurtado: Each Newcomer Transformed California, the Exotic into California, the Familiar
    • 789 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Intimate Frontiers by Hurtado: Each Newcomer Transformed California, the Exotic into California, the Familiar

    Hurtado says in his book intimate Frontiers that “each newcomer transformed California the exotic into California the familiar, a long established pattern that yet continues” (133). I somewhat agree with Hurtado’s statement that everyone who migrated to California for whatever reason tried to convert California into a place that looks familiar, each and every person left their mark on California, and this is why California today is a blend of different cultures and different races. Even today we see a lot of immigrants try to fit in, in order to fit in they try to change things, make their temples, churches, mosques, they make their own community centers, they do this so that they don’t feel too alienated, they try to turn it into something familiar. This is what people back then did; they tried to turn the exotic into familiar. It is normal that people who migrate to other places they try to turn it into something familiar, something that doesn’t look or feel too different from what they are used to of, they try to make changes according to their needs, their beliefs and their traditions; that are what happened back then, people tried to introduce and impose their religious and social ideas. There were very few women in California so people brought women from their own races into California to establish families here; the exotic Indian women were replaced by familiar women.…

    • 789 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Analysis of Gloria Jimenez's "Against All Odds and Against the Common Good"
    • 1036 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Analysis of Gloria Jimenez's "Against All Odds and Against the Common Good"

    Gloria Jiménez wrote an essay at Tuffs University in 2003 named, “Against All Odds and Against the Common Good (Jiménez 116). The purpose of this essay is to persuade and support the following thesis: “Still, when all is said and done about lotteries bringing a vast amount of money into the lives of many people into the lives of a few, the states should not be in the business of urging people to gamble (Jiménez 116).” The evidence given in support of toward this argument does not point toward the proper thesis identified in the beginning of the essay.…

    • 1036 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Ecology of Fear: How Eden Lost It's Garden
    • 377 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Ecology of Fear: How Eden Lost It's Garden

    Chapter two of Ecology of Fear is titled “How Eden Lost Its Garden”, and discusses the various social and political reasons behind drastic changes to the landscape of Los Angeles during the twentieth century. The first section, called “The Underproduction of Public Space”, begins by discussing the belief in the 1930’s that there was a severe lack of public parks, amounts that did not meet tourists’ expectations for when they came to Southern California. Population and build levels had been growing rapidly, but developers ignored the pleas for more parks and recreation. The eventual lack was due to speculation or excessive and inflated land prices. Olmsted wanted to create “greenbelts” to both look good and have functionality.…

    • 377 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Brush Fire Analysis
    • 1237 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Brush Fire Analysis

    To the locals of Southern California early autumn marks the beginning of the Santa Ana winds. The Santa Ana winds are extremely dry and powerful winds, that are funneled through canyons from inland valleys to the coast of Southern California. The two essays “Brush Fire” by Linda Thomas and “The Santa Ana” by Joan Didion are different perspectives of the Santa Ana winds. Thomas views the Santa Ana winds as a necessity of nature, while Didion views them as a malevolent force of nature.…

    • 1237 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Los Angeles Notebook Essay
    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Los Angeles Notebook Essay

    Joan Didion, a concerned citizen living in the nicer parts of Los Angeles near the ocean, writes the “Los Angeles Notebook” about the return of the Santa Ana winds and how the winds are altering the ordinary behaviors of the Los Angeles citizens. Didion claims the Santa Ana winds aren’t just in Santa Ana, but also in Switzerland, and are very perilous with a strong disruption in normal human nature, suggesting a mechanistic behavior. Through her use of apprehensive diction, eerie imagery, and suspenseful syntax, Didion depicts the winds as a threatening entity.…

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Santa Ana Winds Passage- Ap Lang
    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Santa Ana Winds Passage- Ap Lang

    In the first paragraph Didion begins by describing the eerie feeling in the air with words that connote an anxious tone, such as “uneasy”, “unnatural”, and “tension”. She does not mention what she is describing in her piece until the next paragraph, which creates suspense and gives the reader the impression that the subject she speaks of is a terrible thing. Once she reveals the subject, the Santa Ana Winds, the piece gains a certain emphasis and the reader instantly connects it with being malevolent. Didion also depicts the scene which many denizens of the Los Angeles area will encounter during the Santa Ana period: “For a few days now we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night” (239). In this excerpt she describes how the wind will cause many fires and maybe even deaths, which give the impression that the winds are very dangerous. The author remember how due to the wind “[She] rekindle[d] a waning argument with the telephone company” (239). The argument had weakened but the winds evoked a rage inside her that burst into uncontrollable actions, revealing how the wind negatively altered her emotions and actions.…

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Laborer by diego rivera
    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Laborer by diego rivera

    Diego Rivera’s artwork is very unique and is still very popular today. Diego Rivera, who is arguably one of the most important 20th Century Latin American artists, who was only eighteen years old at the time, painted “El Albanil” in 1904. This painting is only one of three or four known paintings to exist from that early period of the artist’s career. It shows his talent for a muralist style and like most well known for representing. The oil on canvas painting is signed by the artist and dated 1904. To me, this painting stood out to me because it was one of the only paintings in the exhibit where it had only one person in the painting.…

    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    La Santa Muerte: Poem Analysis
    • 955 Words
    • 4 Pages

    La Santa Muerte: Poem Analysis

    As the Catholic Church continues to frown upon homosexuals, they continue to frown upon transsexuals to an even greater extent. They see it as even larger perversion of the (already perverted) homosexual lifestyle. At the risk of generalizing, I would argue that many transsexuals then find that they need someone or something that will not judge them and only treat them with the respect they need. La Santa Muerte helps to fill the void left by society in many North American transsexuals. With most people not liking what they do not understand or ca not explain, this makes transsexuals the perfect target for them and the Church. People cannot explain why there are transsexuals, they do not know how hard it is to be transsexual, and they…

    • 955 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    High Tide In Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver
    • 728 Words
    • 2 Pages

    High Tide In Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver

    In High Tide In Tucson, Barbara Kingsolver touches on many aspects of living and the nuances that make life worth living. Her series of essays depict many situations found in life with a new light of clarity. In her essays, she is able to draw from her experiences to teach others the many life lessons that she has learned. Since all the essays involve narratives in her eyes, the reader is able to grasp the personal aspect and to feel as if they too have had the same experiences. Kingsolver also displays awe for the natural world and a passion for protecting it. She respects all the world's cultures without undue glorification, admiring their virtues and discussing their flaws evenhandedly, showing her judicious views on life. Her essays shed new light to those who are trying to find their way in life.…

    • 728 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    La Story
    • 2332 Words
    • 10 Pages

    La Story

    Alec Waugh, a British novelist once said, “you can fall in love at first sight with a place as with a person”. A place can have so much character to not only make a person fall in love at first sight, but to keep that person entranced by love for the place. The city one might picture is Paris the city of love or the islands of Hawaii. However, this city is not the typical city that comes to mind. It is the city with busy streets and beautiful people, Los Angeles. The beaches of Los Angeles can be breathtaking, but it is the personality of Los Angeles that keeps a person around. A story based on a life of a Los Angeles native portrays the city as a land of opportunity.…

    • 2332 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    The California Agriculture Fraud
    • 4696 Words
    • 19 Pages

    The California Agriculture Fraud

    In January 2002 after more than 23 years in Nebraska and a year stint teaching/traveling in China, I finally finished my undergraduate studies at the University of Nebraska and promptly fled the Great Plains for the Elusive Eden. After the light shock of difficult parking, high traffic, and idiotic housing prices I fell in love with my strange new home in the Bay Area. My first big California surprise was not the preponderance of far out community activists and ridiculous law proposals: Reading up on Berkeley prepared me for that. Nor was I very alarmed by the fatal shooting a few blocks from my apartment on Alcatraz Ave that first month. Instead my surprise came months later on a summer late night road trip to Los Angeles with my visiting brothers.…

    • 4696 Words
    • 19 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More

Related Topics