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Annotated bibliography on mental illness in literature
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Didion's narrative technique in "Los Angeles Notebook" describes a wind that is sweeping across the Los Angeles air. This wind is not like any other wind. It causes a change in character of the people and in the environment, creating tension and an unnatural stillness. Didion's use of imagery conveys an eerie mood. Through imagery, She voices, her "neighbor would not come out of the house for days, there were no lights on at night and her husband roamed the place with a machete." People's actions are changed and they have murderous and unusual characteristics that come about when the Santa Ana winds begin to blow. Her diction tells how people who live with the Santa Ana accept the odd workings of human behavior when its winds haunt the Los Angeles air. The Santa Ana creates feelings even the people themselves do not understand. Didion applies active verbs that stirs paranoia because …show more content…
She illustrates,"The baby frets. The maid sulks." It ignites an atmosphere of worry and concern as Didion's mood of an ominous darkness thickens.
The passage goes on to narrate that the Santa Ana winds turns out to be a case in which "sciences bears out folk wisdom". The Santa Ana is a foehn wind which happens on a specific slope of a mountain and changes temperature as it glides down the mountain then turns into a hot dry wind. Didion's ambiguity makes known that doctors believe that people tend to overreact when people state they suffer from "nervousness", "depression" and other insignificant symptoms. Doctors think these symptoms come about in people because of the belief in superstition and what is supposedly supposed to happen to human health when these winds come around. Didion creates ethos through her factual evidence as stated in the last paragraph."In Switzerland the suicide rates goes up during the foehn
Joan Didion uses words such as ‘eerie’, ‘depression’, and ‘unnatural’ bringing an unsettling and serious tone. Didion reflects this uneasiness on the people and how as Santa Ana nears, it affects them. “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 (Didion).” As Santa Ana looms closer the people living in the area get a strange sensation, almost self preparing themselves for the worst. Linda Thomas however describes the atmosphere in a different light. Thomas uses words such as ‘undisturbed’, ‘undamaged’, and ‘natural’ bringing a more casual and normalized tone. “I awoke to air so dry that the graze of my nightgown against the down comforter created tiny orange sparks… And as I make the drive to work, I find myself beneath a smoky sky the color of fire (Thomas).” The self knowing that Santa Ana is there, just like with Didion, but there is no strange feeling present. It is almost as if the presence of Santa Ana is not bothering and
She excites the feelings of guilt and pity in order to gain the support of her audience. By using details that describe the horrible work conditions of “several thousand little girls”, such as “in the deafening noise of the spindles” and “all night through”, she emphasizes how bad the children’s lives are without the proper laws. Another example of pathos being used is “A little girl, on her thirteenth birthday, could start away from her home at half past five in the afternoon, carrying her pail of midnight luncheon, and could work in the mill from six at night until six in the morning…” Kelly’s subtle emphasis on the innocence of children as seen the preceding example, gives the audience a feeling of guilt because children shouldn’t need to work through the night. By going into more detail about the type of work children do, Kelley helps to persuade the audience into making a change in order to satisfy their
Baby narrates her story through her naïve, innocent child voice. She serves as a filter for all the events happening in her life, what the narrator does not know or does not comprehend cannot be explained to the readers. However, readers have reason not to trust what she is telling them because of her unreliability. Throughout the beginning of the novel we see Baby’s harsh exposure to drugs and hurt. Jules raised her in an unstable environment because of his constant drug abuse. However, the narrator uses flowery language to downplay the cruel reality of her Montreal street life. “… for a kid, I knew a lot of things about what it felt like to use heroin” (10). We immediately see as we continue reading that Baby thinks the way she has been living her life is completely normal, however, we as readers understand that her life is in fact worse then she narrates. Baby knows about the impermanent nature of her domestic security, however, she repeatedly attempts to create a sense of home each time her and Jules move to another apartm...
Meaning/Main Idea - The meaning of Joan Didion’s The Los Angeles Notebook may seem like it is only about the foehn. While this may hold true when the passage is read at face value, further analysis shows that due to the very abstract language, she is shooting for a deeper meaning. This deeper meaning is shown when she mentions that living in Santa Ana exposes her to a “deeply mechanistic view of human behavior” (paragraph 1). This changes the meaning of the whole passage from describing the foehn to expressing the mechanical aspects of human behavior that are shown due to the wind. These mechanistic behaviours vary from how the everyone she meets knows that the wind is coming (paragraph 1) to the strange behaviour of her neighbors (paragraph
She imitated Sethe, talked the way she did, laughed her laugh and used her body the same way down to the walk, the way Sethe moved her hands, sighed through her nose, held her head. Sometimes coming upon them making men and women cookies or tacking scraps of cloth on Baby Suggs’ old quilt, it was difficult for Denver to tell who was who. Then the mood changed and the arguments began. Slowly at first. A complaint from Beloved, an apology from Sethe. A reduction of pleasure at some special effort the older woman made. Wasn’t it too cold to stay outside? Beloved gave a look that said, So what? Was it past bedtime, the light no good for sewing? Beloved didn’t move; said, ‘Do it,’ and Sethe complied”
In the ''Los Angeles Notebook'' by Joan Didion describes the Santa Ana's wind and its effect by emphasizing the wind's ability to change human behavior before during and after the winds presents, Didion does this by demonstrating supporting detail and imagery. Didion also expresses all of her ideas in first person view and in the present tense. Didion supports an eerie, ominous and dark mood by presenting it with strong imagery and detail, by stating ''My only neighbor would not come out of her house'' and ''Her husband roamed the place with a machete''. Didion also demonstrates personal recollection to assist with the eerie, ominous, and dark mood by stating ''The Indians will throw themselves into the sea with the bad wind blow.'' Didion references other cultures by comparing the Santa Ana winds to the foehn wind. The Santa Ana winds or the foehn wind can dramatically change people's behavior and causes people to commit crimes and suicide. Didion supports this by stating ''in Switzerland the suicide rates goes up during the
The Infant Child plays a huge role in Blanche’s early life. As a result of her mother’s death, Blanche has a fearful temperament, and
The plainest way one see how they diverge is in how each author approaches the destruction that the Santa Ana brings to Los Angeles when its winds begin to blow in early December. Thomas’ tone starts didactic, and informative, her writing’s syntax more mechanical than the opposing text. Thomas is describing the nuanced details of the storm itself, and the hills it dominates. She describes the “padre's staff”, a grass that “requires the heat of a flame to crack open their seed pods and prepare for germination”, the intermittent nature of chaparral foliage that “ranges from ground-level wildflowers that require a magnifying glass, to eight-foot scrub oak and sage bushes.” The reader is focused on these smaller details, and Thomas uses this strategy to pull the reader in, drag them through place where “ fire that can rush up a canyon like a locomotive, roaring and exploding brush as it rages”. She lets the reader see it all, what everything she’s just told them actually means when conglomerated. Didion, on the other hand, is not focusing on the natural setting of the Santa Ana, although the fire looms large in her text as well, but the human setting. Her tone is thus more emotionally based, more feeling flows through it, there is a dynamism to her voice. Instead of focusing on describing the hills, Didion writes about the emotion that flows through the city, the maid sulking, the baby fretting. As the texts goes on the collective anger builds, and does the sentence length and complexity. Didion uses her syntax to slowly focus in on situations of pent-up rage that are allowed a channel of release during the strange desert season that takes hold, speaking of a time when every booze party ends in a fight, husbands roam their homes with machetes, and prominent attorneys commit
The author uses symbolism to describe the aura of the town, creating an oppressive atmosphere for the reader. The oppressive heat tells the reader that the town is hiding something,
As Jeanette Walls reveals this unraveling tale of her childhood she spares little to no detail from scrutiny, least of all the faults she finds in her father. As the reader enters the scene of her earliest memory the irrational thought process of her mother is instantly brought to light. A toddler catches herself on fire while attempting to cook hotdogs and who is to come to the rescue?
The narrator accepts the fact that she must live the rest of her unfulfilling and undesirable life with Daniel. Finally, “Around us the fog settles over everything like a shroud.” (“Alrededor de nosotros, la niebla presta a las cosas un carácter de inmovilidad definitivo”; 47, 95). The narrator surrenders herself to the fog, the silence, and the death.
The first effect of the birth imagery is to present the speaker's book as a reflection of what she sees in herself. Unfortunately, the "child" displays blemishes and crippling handicaps, which represent what the speaker sees as deep faults and imperfections in herself. She is not only embarrassed but ashamed of these flaws, even considering them "unfit for light". Although she is repulsed by its flaws, the speaker understands that her book is the offspring of her own "feeble brain", and the lamentable errors it displays are therefore her own.
... the desire to find out who he is. A Kiowan by birth connected to his ancestors through his grandmother and her love of her people. By the end of Joan Didion’s quest to face the past, she realizes she doesn’t have to create the same life that she had for her daughter. Didion holds on to the things that bring her joy, such as her grandmother’s tea cups, and gets rid of the things she can’t control. She realizes that she can create memories for her daughter through giving her the love and time she needs. She wants to allow her daughter to experience being a kid without having to please anyone. “...would like to pledge her picnic on a river with fried chicken and her hair uncombed, would like to give her home for her birthday.” Because she can’t offer those things to her because of how they live, she gives her a xylophone and promises to tell her a funny story.
o The daughter, Mathilda, is somewhat dynamic as she changes from stubborn and defiant (line 18) to broken, betrayed and angry. (last paragraph)
In the third stanza, the baby is innocent and unaware of the events that are taking place, “cooed and laughed and rocked the pram”. By the words “i was embarrassed and “shake my hand” it is shown how Heaney had to take the role...