The essay, "Los Angeles Notebook , written by Joan Didion, is about the Santa Ana winds and its affects on people. She views the winds as scientific and horrific. This is noticed by the development of the paragraphs. The paragraphs go from a deep dark tone to a more reasoning, scientific tone. Paragraph 1 she introduces the Santa Ana wind and its dark qualities..
The Scarlet Letter Chapters 1-6 Response Journal Chapter one The Prison Door sets the mood of the novel. It describes how the founders of the Puritan colony knew there would be crime so they built a prison. It can be inferred that the mood is cruel because of how everything in the jail is described. “The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else on the world” (Hawthorne, 41).
Passage 1- Pages 84-85 My first passage is on the occasion of Missus Lu slicing her cheek. Missus Lu is acting hysterical, making rash decisions to regain things she has lost since she has moved to Bell Creek. She believes that since moving to Bell Creek, she has been robbed of her beauty. Missus seems to be repeating the point of her enticing beauty.
In the novel The Year of Magical Thinking written by Joan Didion, Joan discusses her grief due to the loss of her husband and we see a specific style where the narrator is the writer, therefore we get to read about the thoughts about the one mourning. Joan’s spoke about her relationship with her husband before he died with regret, identifying each flaw that they may have had making her, as a narrator, much more credible. She also used facts to help her understand her husband’s heart attack perhaps to help her conceive the fact that her husband really was dead. “Only after I read the autopsy report did I stop trying to reconstruct the collision, the collapse of the dead stop. The collapse had been there all along…”
In Patricia Hampl’s, The Dark Art of Description, Hampl discusses the memoir: an autobiography written from one’s personal experience. In a memoir, we write about our consciousness which Hampl refers to as the part of you that gets intertwined with the material of the story and that part of you, is the self: “ Description in memoir is where the consciousness of the writer and the material of the story are established in harmony, where the self is lost in the material, in a sense.” The self refers to who you see yourself as and what makes you, you. Hampl mentions, “The self is not the subject of memoir...
Joan Didion in the article, “On Keeping a Notebook” (1968) explains that keeping a notebook is a great way to keep your thoughts together. Didion supports her explanation by telling about examples of a girl who starts to keep a notebook; she tells why keeping a notebook is important other than just trying to keep our thoughts together. The author’s purpose is to enlighten to begin to keep a notebook. The author writes in a personal tone for anyone that is skeptical about keeping a notebook. Didion uses three rhetorical strategies in her article; rhetorical questions, flashbacks, and pathos.
(Goldberg, 1). She wrote to please her teachers instead of to express her thoughts. As she delves into the third chapter, First Thoughts, her theme of freedom takes the centerstage. She writes a list of how to write. She states that the writer must “lose control” and not “get logical” (8).
Didion became a writer by writing meaningful or random notes. She learned about herself and other people by examining her own writing because she asserted that as we grow older, we will gradually forget who we were in the past, from our childhood to teenage memories including our heartbreaks and friends we met along the way. These notes served as handy momentous from the past; and recorded information how much we had grown through the years. Most importantly, reflecting on the events through our writings was the most enduring way to keep that memory close to our hearts. Without a doubt, she was able to bring her point across of keeping a notebook.
Eventually the suppression of the inner self builds a desire to express the individual’s true feelings. The urge to express oneself is at its core, a right, and is not unlike one of the most
Writing helped the narrator to be happy and be productive. Without writing the narrator would be bored, and wouldn't be able to keep her mind off her troubles. Therefore, the narrator had to secretly write. Also, there were expectations from John, her husband, and society. The narrator feels as if working and being productive will help her health, “personally, I disagree with their ideas.
As a college student, Emily Vallowe wrote a literacy narrative with a play on words title: “Write or Wrong Identity.” In this work, she told the story of how she believed her confidence as a writer developed; however, she was becoming dubious as to her distinctiveness as an author. Although I have never been a self-proclaimed wordsmith as Ms. Vallowe obviously had been for years, I related to her journey. Not only did she grow up in Northern Virginia like I did, she never considered herself an inept writer—a possibility that I could not fathom about myself. Then, at some point, we both began to question our own ability and to question who we really were.
Too much self-expression can cause unnecessary tension both physically and mentally. Individuals must learn to show some personal character but also abide by moral standards. This will allow one to live a balanced life between individuality and
Joan Didion’s “Los Angeles Notebook” is an essay that highlights the deeply mechanistic view of human behavior by using images that are both enticing, yet horrifying at the same time. Her audience is broader than the people of Los Angles, who she discusses in articulate detail. Being that her audience is generally aimed at people who are concerned about humanity and the way people operate together in certain scenarios. There is an eerie sense to this piece, as the subject is the hot winds known as foehn by scientists, but otherwise known as a “Santa Ana” by the people of the region. Didion claims that, in the simplest terms, “to live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior,”
The Bible is a book that is filled with knowledge and truth that many people follow today. Despite all of the applicable wisdom the Bible contains, it also brings about many questions that are left unanswered to this day. The book of Genesis is filled with such questions that can make one’s head hurt if thought about for too long. One of those questions that is constantly asked and answered differently is: Who is the God of Israel in the book of Genesis? What makes this question especially difficult to answer is the fact that there are two different names for God used in Genesis as well as the fact there is more than one source used to write Genesis. With that said, throughout the book of Genesis, the God of Israel is depicted as a just,
I have always hated writing about myself, and I always dreaded assignments in school where I had to describe myself. I always wanted to avoid doing these assignments because I did not want to sound narcissistic, or self-absorbed. I dislike people like that now, because I used to be one of those people. It took many lessons learned before I humbled myself; I am still learning to humble myself today with recent experiences I have had. Although I hate to write about myself, I have always liked to reflect on myself.
