Chloe Ibardaloza

5/3/20
AP Lang
Ms.Scharf

Santa Ana Winds Essay

When people think of Southern California many think of the fresh hot summer breeze

that flows gently in the air. For the locals of this land that live here yearly the Santa Ana winds

would come to mind when thinking of “breezes”. Occurring through the months of October

through March these winds are seen as a wreckage to the lifestyles of thousands of people who

are in the Santa Ana Winds paths. In Joan Didion’s essay “Los Angeles Notebook”, Didion

portrays the winds by displaying how the winds affect people and how they can change the

behavior within them. She conveys this view by illustrating the consequences and damages that

have occured for many people who have lived in these areas.

Didion throughout her essay has portrayed the winds as a “tense” feeling and as an

“unnatural stillness” in the air. Here she wants to give the reader a first glimpse into the winds, in

which they can change a person’s mood instantly when it enters the area. She then goes on with

saying how if you are to live in the Santa Ana winds path you must “accept, consciously or

unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.”. Didion expresses the fact that

these winds or a season could make a person go mad, in fact knowing that this season of weather

is always in the back of these people’s minds, the anticipation that these winds are coming.

When the winds do arrive, they mess with people’s behavior. Didion calls onto an occurrence in

which “Indians would throw themselves into the sea when the bad wind blew.” The winds in

these areas are affecting these people’s mindsets. That the winds are something to fear, or they

should run away from it.

 With Didion portraying the winds as a malevolent occurence in the weather during this

time of year in Southern California, she conveys this by illustrating winds or gloomy weather in

other parts of the world. Didion gives facts on how winds are said in other parts of the world,

“...the foehn of Austria and Switzerland and the khamsin of Israel.” She then goes on with

saying, “In Switzerland the suicide rate goes up during the foehn...Surgeons watch out for wind

[since] blood does not clot normally during a foehn.” Didion points these facts out since it is a

universal mindset that during wind occurrences it changes people’s behavior on how they think

and act. She wanted to bring in other countries so she can show the reader how severe a weather

occurrence throughout a time in the year can severely damage a person if not careful enough.

She then goes on with saying how when the winds are here “The sky has a yellow cast, the kind

of light sometimes called “earthquake weather.” She gives an image to the reader on how the

atmosphere looks, an intensified place to be during this time. This would cause many to live in

fear of the winds which would end up with people wanting out of these areas.

Overall, Didion’s essay in the “Los Angeles Notebook” portrays the winds as a menace,

that they change a person's behavior or mindset overall. She does this by displaying how the

winds affected people severely in their behavior of everyday life or end up ending their life after

all.