SANTA ANA WINDS
Joan Didion
RHETORICAL ANALYSIS
Moran
Busayo, Jade, & Moran:
• “There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural
stillness, some tension.”
• Didion’s suspense builds through her use of the words “something uneasy” and “in
the [Los Angeles] air”, because as readers we start to wonder what this
“something” is. We are a bit alarmed about what might be “in the air”.
• Her use of “unnatural” suggests something otherworldly could be happening.
• Her use of anaphora, (the repeating of an initial word/phrase), as in “some
unnatural stillness, some tension” mimics the idea of struggling to identify exactly
what is wrong that afternoon.
• Didion establishes her context, letting the audience know it is a southern California
afternoon by saying, “…in the Los Angeles air this afternoon,…”
• Didion’s use of the phrase, “some unnatural stillness” conveys her uneasiness, her
fear, and just how hushed everything seems.
• Didion’s “some tension” arouses a curiosity in the reader, because now we want to
know what is the cause of this “tension”.
Matt, Tim, Matt & Moran:
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“What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining
down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio Passes, blowing up sand storms out along Route 66, drying
the hills and the nerves to flash point.”
This word order and arrangement of details sets an eerie mood and an ominous tone for much of the
rest of the passage.
“What it means is that …” By using an inverted word order in the start of this sentence, Didion draws
out the suspense just a bit further, until she announces, “…tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow…”
.Her simple word choices, “blow”, “hot”, and “wind” suggest that this Santa Ana phenomenon is just
plain aggressive, and straightforward and awful. No use trying to pretty it up.
Didion’s use of antithesis (opposites), “whining down,” and “blowing up,” bolsters Didion’s purpose by
suggesting that this Santa Ana wind will turn everything topsy-turvy.
Didion’s use of “a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio
Passes” personifies the Santa Ana as it seems to creep around slithering like a snake through LA’s
mountains. “Whining” echoes the uneasiness of the first line of the passage.
Didion’s zeugma, “drying the hills and the nerves to flash point,” reveals the power of the Santa Ana to
dry both concrete things like hills and abstract things like nerves.
Didion’s use of the phrase “flash point” could also mean “burn” or “fry”—so that by saying that the wind
dries the nerves to flash point, it is saying that the Santa Ana makes you lose your sanity. Your nerves
are fried.
Sarah, Sofia, Tehreem, Brandon & Moran:
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“For a few days now we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night. I have neither
heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it
too. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with
the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air.”
Didion’s imagery and context, when she says, “For a few days now we will see smoke back in the
canyons, and hear sirens in the night,” covers two to three days’ time to suspect the arrival of the Santa
Ana winds, and conveys an almost blasé’ attitude/tone towards the winds.
Using a narrative rhetorical pattern, Didion suggests when she says, “ I have neither heard nor read that
a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too,” that she is not
communicating with people , having “neither heard nor read”, but is “seeing” them instead, implying
that the human reactions to the Santa Ana are visually obvious.
Didion’s parallel sentence arrangements, “… but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today
knows it too. We know it because we feel it,” reinforces the idea that while everyone knows it, no one is
saying it, everyone is just in this little community, going about their business, casting sidelong glances at
each other in the Shoprite parking lot, just everyone running along parallel lines that never seem to
meet.
Didion’s short sentences, “The baby frets. The maid sulks,” highlight the intensity, add to the ominous
tone and are perhaps mimicking the short tempers of Didion and everyone else.
Her use of “rekindle” suggests Didion’s metaphorical re-lighting a fire--suffering under the influence of
the winds, she is clearly on edge, as she reluctantly gives in to what everyone else seems to have given
in to—the cranky, irritableness that accompanies a Santa Ana event.
Beth, Amanda, Krupali, Usamah, Moran:
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“I recall being told, when I first moved to Los Angeles and was living on an isolated beach,
that the Indians would throw themselves into the sea when the bad wind blew. I could see
why. The Pacific turned ominously glossy during a Santa Ana period, and one woke in the
night troubled not only by the peacocks’ screaming in the olive trees but by the eerie absence
of surf.”
Didion’s referencing Indian lore suggests that the Santa Ana has been making people
desperate for centuries, since before Europeans were in California. Mentioning that the
“Indians” would throw themselves into the sea during a Santa Ana event continues to
reinforce her ominous tone and purpose, to let her readers know that this wind is historical,
of ancient legend, and very dangerous.
Her use of “when the bad wind blew,” mimics the rhetorical speech patterns of Native
Americans learning to speak English.
Her short sentence , “I could see why,” sets a gloomy, dark and grim tone, and reaffirms the
Indian lore mentioned in the previous sentence.
“The Pacific turned ominously glossy”—Didion’s use of “glossy” suggests that the usually
wild and choppy water of the ocean is now dangerously shiny and still, grimly glowing .
Didion’s use of visual and auditory imagery represents the atmosphere where even the
animals are “screaming” and out of control. This imagery relates to what Didion says in the
next sentence, when she announces that there is an “eerie absence of surf.”
Anuja, Eriny, Shivani, Tor, Sam & Moran
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“The heat was surreal. The sky had a yellow cast, the kind of light sometimes called
“earthquake weather.” My only neighbor would not come out of her house for days, and
there were no lights at night, and her husband roamed the place with a machete. One day he
would tell me that he had heard a trespasser, the next a rattlesnake.”
The simplicity of Didion’s short sentence and use of the word “surreal” conveys a profound
sense of how the heat is so bad, so beyond real, that it can only be described in a short
sentence. As if in this heat, Didion is just out of breath and has no more energy.
The visual imagery of a yellow cast to the sky and the relating of this light to “earthquake
weather” increase the ominous tone as well as adding suspense.
The “only” neighbor suggests that Didion lives in an isolated area, and that the neighbor
won’t “come out” suggests a building fear and loneliness. One can picture a house with the
shades down and the doors locked. There is no one who can help out in an emergency, we
start to think.
The imagery of the husband “roam[ing] the place” with a machete and can’t decide if he is
hearing a trespasser or a rattlesnake, conveys a descent into lawless chaos, where the few
people near Didion are unable to make decisions, and are panicked, and maybe paranoid,
too.
BONUS: There is here a sense of a literary allusion to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, in
that many of the characters in his novel succumb to their most base instincts in order to
survive the political upheaval happening around them.
Sandeep, Aaron, Mahmoud, Dan & Moran
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“’On nights like that,’ Raymond Chandler once wrote about the Santa Ana, ‘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.’ That was the kind of wind it was.”
“…like that” sounds ominous—as if Chandler is saying, “People like that should be in
jail…”Chandler is differentiating these nights from typical, ordinary nights, conveying a
negative tone here.
When Chandler says “‘every booze party ends in a fight,” Didion wants to depict how violent
scenarios at home can occur “every” night.
When Didion quotes Chandler saying that “Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving
knife and study their husbands’ necks,” the imagery suggests that the Santa Ana winds
change people’s personalities and relationships in very sinister ways.
Chandler’s use of the word, “study” suggests pre-meditation on the wives’ parts.
When Chandler says “Anything can happen.,” the reader realizes just how extreme the
weather can be in its power to affect human behavior. Anything goes. All bets are off. We’re
all gonna die…
And finally, when Didion ends with “That was the kind of wind it was,” it’s as if she is
finishing a really interesting storytelling hour…