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Analysis Of Living Like Weasels By Annie Dillard

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In the Essay “Living Like Weasels” by Annie Dillard, she writes on how she encounters a weasel and it leads her to reflect on her own life. A memorable event in my life that led me to an insight about my own life or the human condition is when my school took a trip to Princeton in the woods. First, on this trip there were an abundance of activities to do since we were in the great outdoors. There was basketball, an advanced tag game and more. Since we were outdoors, there were many animals and insects and cabins, and also different paths to take to get from places. On the trip, there was a tightrope walk to get across a river, I for one made it across safely without falling in the river but some people didn’t. Then after we crossed we encountered
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"Living Like Weasels", an essay by Annie Dillard, interprets the author 's encounter with a weasel and her precise determination on the way a human lives by choice against the weasel 's life of necessity. While the weasel fights for survival, Dillard infers that the weasel has much more freedom than a human who lives by choice. In "Living Like Weasels", the weasel represents free will;"the weasel has no ties to responsibility as humans do". Although the weasel lives out of necessity and survival, Dillard assumes that, unlike humans, the weasel truly has freedom.

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In Annie Dillard’s story The Deer at Providencia, she talks about her experiences with suffering in life. The message that Dillard is trying to convey is that nobody can escape suffering, so we have to learn to accept it as a part of life. The first example of this message is when Dillard sees the deer at Providencia for the last time, and she glances at the deer pityingly and says the Spanish equivalent of “poor little thing.” However, after that Dillard says that she “knew at the time it was a ridiculous thing to say (Dillard 44).” This proves that she acknowledges the suffering it is experiencing, but knows that it is futile to point it out, as suffering is inescapable- it is a part of life.

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According to David Foster Wallace, default setting is when we believe ourselves to be the “absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.” In his “This is Water” speech, he continues to explain that we have a choice of what to think about and we “get to decide how we’re going to try to see it.” It would be not just looking at something small, but looking at something as a whole. While Annie Dillard’s “Seeing” doesn’t make reference to his idea of default setting, her essay still had plenty of points about the idea of seeing other things. In Annie Dillard’s “Seeing” she show multiples examples of not just looking at yourself, but rather at the smaller things that people would never really see unless they were to really try to look and see.

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Living Like Weasels Rhetorical Analysis In her essay “Living Like Weasels”, Annie Dillard explores the idea of following a single calling in life, and attaching one’s self it this calling as the weasel on Ernest Thompson Seton’s eagle had. Dillard presents her argument using the analogy of a weasel and how the; “weasel lives as he’s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity” (Dillard). In constructing her argument, however, she often contradicts herself undermining the effectiveness of her argument and leaving the reader confused. Dillard primarily uses ethos and pathos to support her argument and concerning both, the reader discovers; inconsistencies in her character, and conflicts between her perceptions

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In “Living Like Weasels,” Dillard encounters a weasel while enjoying the serenity of Hollis Pond in Virginia. During this meeting, she has an epiphany when, “Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key” (“LIVING”). This intriguing moment lures Dillard to gather research and learn more about this animal. As a result, she discovers that the weasel’s instinctive life emerges as more satisfying than a human’s lifestyle, which focuses on the American Dream.

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In the woods, we explored deer trails that made their way to the very back to a beautiful creek that ran through the thicket. There were small waterfalls flowing down and a water hole we would jump in for fun. The only downside were the

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