The Santa Ana Winds 10/22/2016

Joan Didion, in her writing "The Santa Ana Winds", describes a usual yet bizarre phenomenon known as the Santa Ana's. Her purpose was to convey how violent the winds can be and emphasize the strange and altering effects that they have on everything, especially human behavior. Didion uses words like "eerie", "screaming", and "surreal" in the second paragraph to express the uneasiness that the Santa Ana winds bring as they pass over. Her word choice gives the text a very moody and suspenseful tone. It catches the readers attention because it reads like a mystery novel only to then switch tones at the end when Didion starts stating facts about what happens in Los Angeles when these winds hit, all backed up by science. Didion also uses vivid imagery when she mentioned that a "husband roamed the place with a machete". This evokes an image of insanity, especially when she points out that "meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks". Normally these women would cave to their husband's every command, yet the days that the Santa Ana's are blowing through the city the wives feel empowered and start contemplating murder. It further proves that the winds have an effect on people's moods and personalities. 


I feel that Didion was very effective in her writing because she evoked a mysterious vibe and it definitely interested me. She used the rhetorical techniques to her favor and it left the reader with the realization that circumstances outside our control may determine our moods and actions. The text ends leaving the reader uneasy when Didion says, "no one seems to know". Ending on such a mysterious note illustrates the fact that no one will ever know how and why these winds affect people the way they do. And even though the text reads like a fiction novel, the Santa Ana winds are a real occurrence.

PETA's "Go Vegan" Ad 10/8/16

One of the advertisements that we saw during class this week was PETA's, an American animal rights organization’s, “Go Vegan" ad. It shows a picture of a young girl, who is in a sense overweight, eating a hamburger. The girl looks like she is in extreme pain and at first glance even looks like she's crying. The quote on the advertisement reads "Feeding Kids Meat is Child Abuse" and on the bottom it says "Fight the Fat: Go Vegan". The ad portrays the message that making your child eat meat is the equivalent to child abuse and it should not be allowed. The little girl looks as if she is being forced to eat something she doesn’t like or want and is suffering because of it further proving PETA’s point that feeding the child meat is abusive.

I feel that the ad was aimed at parents because by using a child who looks emotionally and physically sick a parent would feel bad and do anything so that the kid doesn’t look like she’s in pain. The creator of the ad successfully used pathos, or emotions, when generating it and relied on the fact that people would feel sad for the child, persuading them to stop eating meat. 

Since PETA is an animal rights organization their purpose and mindset was to get people to stop killing animals and eating them. From other ads made by PETA the general theme that repeats is that “animals are not ours to eat”. But that is never going to happen. Meat has been part of our lifestyle from the beginning so I think the ad was effective in the sense that it opened peoples eyes to how much meat they are eating but I don’t think it would convince people to go vegan all together. Meat has nutritional value; it has protein and we need it for our strength and muscles. Cutting meat out of our lives will not make us skinnier. I have a cousin who is vegan and she is constantly eating; she’s never full because she doesn’t eat full meals. If it’s not meat we will find something else because we need to substitute that big portion of our meals and the substitute could be very unhealthy to us. So the ad didn’t have a huge impact on me and I don’t think it had as big an impact on the world population either.