Differences And Similarities Between Audubon And Annie Dillard

With the English language, there are thousands of different ways to describe an event or even a single object. In the two passages, two different authors use various methods to describe a large flock of birds in flight. The first author, John James Audubon, describes the flock in his book, Ornithological Biographies. The second author, Annie Dillard, describes the flock in her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The passages written by John James Audubon and Annie Dillard have many similarities; however, there are also many differences that set the two stories apart. Both the passage written by John James Audubon and the passage written by Annie Dillard were created with one similar purpose, which was to describe an experience that either author

One of the main differences would be in the rhetorical devices that the authors decided to use. James Audubon used a rhetorical device to describe the sheer quantity of birds when he says, “The air was literally filled with pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse; the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose.” This is an example of a hyperbole, or exaggeration, because it is impossible for the sky to literally be filled with pigeons. Annie Dillard uses a different kind of rhetorical device throughout her passage. For example, she used similes when she states, “The flocks each tapered at either end from a rounded middle, like an eye. Over my head I hear a sound of beaten air, like a million shook rugs, a muffled whuff. Into the woods they sorted without shifting a twig, with through the crowns of trees, intricate and rising like wind.” She used three similes throughout these sentences to compare several things. First, she compared the shape of the flocks to an eye. Second, she compared the sound of the flapping wings to the sound of shook rugs. Last, she compared the movement of the birds to wind. Since the authors used different rhetorical devices throughout their stories, the two passages are actually very different from each