Annie Dillard The Chase Analysis

“The Chase” is about an adult chasing some kids, but Annie Dillard makes the story transition from throwing snowballs to “wanting the glory to last forever” and how the excitement of life at one moment can affect someone in the future to show that the excitement of life will always be there even when one is no longer a kid. The story starts with a group of friends, imagining how a game of football goes and continues with the encounter of a stranger. From throwing snowballs at his car to him chasing them till they couldn’t run anymore. The whole experience will change the way she looks at adults. “We all spread out banged together some regular snowballs, took aim, and, when the Buick drew near, fired. A soft snowball hit the driver’s windshield

Now he came down to earth. I wanted the glory to last forever” (Dillard 102-19). Here she see’s this older adult with a car, a nice suit going to work, but having put all that aside just so he could chase a group a young kids through the snow and yards till he finally caught them. She see’s that even though he has all these things and is an adult he still has exciting moments in his life, she could also tell from how he ran after them that he had glory days in football as well and that chasing them must have been like playing football again. Her style of writing has a fine mixture between narrative writing and expository writing, she tells us a lot about her story, but she also tells us about the people there and what all happened. Finally, once they are caught Annie Dillard points out; “He chased us through the backyard labyrinths of ten blocks before he caught us by our jackets. He caught us and we all stopped. We three stood staggering, half blinded, coughing, in an obscure hilltop backyard; a man in his twenties, a boy, a girl. He had released our jackets, our pursuer, our captor, our hero; He knew we weren’t going anywhere. We all played by the rules”. In this part of the story they are caught by the man and while there are many parts of this story where they act like kids and compare the adult to them through the events playing out, this part is different. Here they are acting more adult like and not running away, following the rules and staying put when they are