A Rhetorical Analysis Of 'The Santa Ana' By Joan Didion

In Los Angeles, there is a well known stormed called the Santa Ana that often occurs during the colder months. Joan Didion writes an essay that discusses what the storm is and how it affects the Los Angelenos. Although primarily writing for everyone’s knowledge, being she is a fellow citizen, she directs her thoughts towards Los Angeles’ people She gains a connection with her audience and their emotions. After doing this she selects specific words to help enhance the intensity of the storm. She also uses long sentences to further describe the intensity of the storm through her writing techniques, but towards the end of the essay she uses short sentences to provide information and to show she is knowledgeable to the audience . Being that

Again using the negative word choice to prove how dangerous and mysterious the storm is, hoping for emotions to be touch as a result of it. The third sentence of the this section demonstrates the use of wording, “the pacific turned ominously glossy during the Santa Ana period,.... the peacock screaming in the olive trees by the eerie absence of surf.” “Ominously,” “glossy,” screaming, and eerie, all bear negative connotations, causing a gloomy ambience for the audience. Another way Didion clarifies what her goal is in writing this is by giving her story on her neighbor, “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”(Section 2, sentence 6). This example of her personal life creates the visual of the neighbors being animalistic and continues the construction of the effects of the storm. The sentence about the neighbors is strategically structured as a loose and complex one, just to exaggerate the effects on the fellow Los Angeles citizens. Adding her own personal example of the effects, helps capture the connection between the audience, their emotions, the writing, as well as the

Since it is ending, she switches from writing for the connection of the audience’s emotions, to providing actual information about the effects of the behavioral change. This is done in the last section by Didion to prove she did the research on why the storm affects people in Los Angeles and is not just giving her personal opinion. Therefore she switches from using emotionally sensitive words to more scientific words. For example in the first several sentences of the last section she states “ I did not know there was any basis for the effect… in which science bears… There is a number of persistent…. as a cold mass.” All of the words were used to help ratify that what she was saying was true and that she can be scientific to prove her point. Keeping her sentences short, she continues her scientific act as she gives information about how the storm affects people. Because she wants to supply the audience with a lot of information, she goes slightly off of what she wants to say prior to stating the point. Much like the storm gaining a slow start, but then ending in a big bang. However she combines her personal and scientific persona, wanting to strike the audience’s emotions one last time. She states why the people have a change in emotions “ the positive ions are there, and that is what an excess of positive ions does, in simplest terms, is make people