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Annie Dillard's Essay 'So This Was Adolescence'

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“So This Was Adolescence” was a unique and creative title for this essay. The author could have titled the piece something a little more boring but that wouldn’t have grabbed the reader’s attention like this title did. The wording of her title lets the reader know adolescence isn’t a great experience. The title is almost saying this is it; that’s all it is. The title fit the essay exceptionally well because in her essay Annie Dillard explains her adolescence experience and how awful it was. Dillard included many metaphors when writing this essay. The metaphors added more depth to her writing. In the first paragraph she compared her life to turnpike tunnels. Her life began being winding and changing much like the tunnels around mountains do. Dillard’s life was also dark the same as the tunnels. During adolescence it may be hard to see …show more content…

The author could have chosen to say adolescence was rough or it was awful, but they wouldn’t make the reader understand just how awful it was. The example she gave about whipping her bed with her belt shows the reader how much anger she had. Many people have probably been in a situation like this before. A time where the anger builds up and whipping or punching something helps to let off some steam. This forms a strong image in the reader’s mind that they can relate to. One of the best images Dillard creates is playing the piano and the drums. She explains how she beats the keys over and over again until they break. This creates an image of a girl so frustrated and distressed that she beats the piano creating an awful noise that expresses the way she is feeling. She also explains how her fingers are so strong she can do push-ups with them. This image shows how much she plays the piano for her fingers to be this strong. All the imagery she includes helped the reader receive an excellent understanding of her

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Dillard includes a shift from inside the plane to back outside in the twenty-ninth paragraph and uses mundane diction choices. While flying in the plane was exhilarating, once they landed, Dillard and Rahm simply “climbed,” “walked,” and “wandered.” These mundate diction choices are used in order to emphasize how being inside the plane juxtaposed to being outside of it. Inside, life was amazing and breathtaking, but outside, everything was mundane and average. The audience can understand how Dillard’s view on life outside the plane had changed--she no longer was interested in it, and desired her new-found life in the sky.

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This is a summary of “A Christmas Story” by Annie Dillard. Every Christmas there was a massive dinner held in a seemingly never-ending dining hall. It was lavish and spacious with a table that was as long as a river and was decorated with many different table cloths and decorations. The ceiling of the hall was covered in chandeliers and the floor was filled with different groupings of people: the sick and injured, the children, to those who wanted to dance or participate in games or various others who gathered in separate sections throughout the hall.

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Tafim Alam Professor Joines Engl 1310 04/11/2023 Intricacy analysis “Intricacy” by Annie Dillard is an excerpt from the larger piece of writing Pilgrims at Tinker Creek. In “Intricacy” Dillard highlights many issues, facts, and characteristics of this world. Dillard highlights the necessity to preserve nature, no matter how big or small. She wants us to focus on the things that we can't see with the naked eye, the things we are unaware of, and the things we walk past every day without noticing.

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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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The novel Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld follows the life of Lee Fiora in her four years spent at a boarding school called Ault. Ault is a prestigous high school in Boston which is made up of wealthy kids and very few kids on scholarships. Lee is one of the few students there on a scholarship since her parents could not afford to pay for Ault. She struggled from her Freshman year to her Senior year of high school trying to find who she really was and how she could fit into the community there. Lee struggles with her identity at Ault and begins as a responsible, smart, social girl but then becomes confused, lonely, and embarassed.

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In order to portray this shift to the reader, she relied on details she experienced through touch or thought, and in doing so, kept the reader engaged throughout her

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They disregarded every external aspect of her, so she was only left to see herself as an organ on the inside. It furthermore shows by her actions that she tackles it emotionally. Cofer seizes the attention of readers by excessively showing

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She was wise beyond her years and a fiery, rebellious spirit. Instead of going to the doctor, she painted pictures that made people talk and discuss. Now she is recognizable over the world for her unique

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such as her use of detailed imagery when describing how she resembled a wriggling beetle to put a comical image in the reader's mind. Her use of positive diction to make light of her serious situation, and her different uses of tone, help educate her readers about the difficulties of living with a

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Annie Dillard’s essay “Sight into Insight” emphasizes how one must live in the moment and not sway towards others opinions in order to gain accurate observations on a situation. She uses nature as a prominent theme in her essay to represent the thought of looking past the superficial obvious in order to go deeper to where the hidden beauty rests. Dillard wants the reader to realize in order to observe clearly you have to live in the moment and let go of the knowledge you think you know on the situation. Dillard uses the example of her “walking with a camera vs walking without one” (para.31) and how her own observations differed with each. When she walked with the camera she “read the light” (para.31), and when she didn’t “light printed” (para.31).

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Perhaps so much that she became one to be remembered. But throughout the book, I caught glimpses that she also became a mystery because no one understood her, saw who she

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Despite her attempts, Dillard fails to present a compelling argument in either case to make the reader want to change their current way of life. In her attempts at appealing to her ethos, Dillard establishes herself as similar to most others to try and demonstrate that anyone can pursue this life, however, this merely serves to show that, like Dillard, few people have reasons to change their life. It also serves to show that even those who want to change their lifestyle will have the same difficulties that Dillard had in leaving her previous life and ways of thinking. The use of pathos further discredits Dillard’s argument by essentially establishing the weasel as a ruthless killer and then asking the reader to adopt its lifestyle as their own. Dillard presents a weak argument in her composition and relies on her detailed language and confusing analogies to convince the reader to senselessly adopt the life of a

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In ¨The Chase¨ from the memoir An American Childhood, Annie Dillard recalls a memorable incident from her childhood, which remained throughout her life, even till the present day. She narrates the adventurous incident where she had voluntarily instigated a strange man -thinking he wouldn’t react- into chasing after her on one particular day. It persisted with Dillard still to this existent, in spite of occurring eons ago, because the pursuit presented her the sheer thrill she later valued and a life-changing experience. Annie Dillard begins the narrative by presenting herself as a tomboy, as she states how she only prefers to hang out with boys for girls are no match for her hobbies. Annie, who was notably different than most girls

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She uses sinful characters that have fallen out the God’s grace to get her message that one’s outward appearance does not matter to God, what matters is that a person has God living internally in their heart.

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Euripides, a famous writer of tragedies in Ancient Greece, stated, “Nothing has more strength than dire necessity” (“Euripides”). Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize recipient, shares this theme in her non-fiction narrative “Living Like Weasels.” Through the production of non-fiction narrative essays, paintings, poetry, and books, she influences her audiences to think about life and the environment. In fact, she appreciates nature and its splendor. In “Living Like Weasels,” she contrasts the behavior of humans and animals while evaluating the meaning of life, and she establishes that living by necessity leads to a more fulfilling journey than striving to achieve the American Dream.

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