Essay Comparing Dillard And Audubon

In the auto-biographical excerpt from Ornithological Biographies by John James Audubon, he depicts his intriguing encounter with the wild pigeons of Ohio, while in Annie Dillard's engaging excerpt from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she illustrates her thought-provoking observation of the Starling roost migration. Both writers had an overriding passion that showed through in the diction, tone, and syntax of their pieces. Because of these different infatuations both authors use different literary devices that match their feelings of how they view the birds and how the birds affected them. The authors were very different in their tonality of the excerpts, as in how Audubon was a scientist studying the life of birds, but Dillard had a passion for the arts. Therefore both writers had a very different style of writing. For example in Audubon's experience he sets his piece with a time and location "In the autumn of 1813... on the banks of Ohio" using a chronological order to make his writings more credible and specific. In the

Audubon uses a geometrical description to depict his image of the fascinating pigeons, but Dillard uses a more informal and intimate tone to show her passion for the beauty of nature. Audubon describes the exit of the birds collecting in "solid masses" that "darted" in "undulating and angular lines" as they "swept close over the earth" they grew so an incredibly fast "velocity" then they were "mounted perpendicular." Audubon ending his observations with this diction and word choice boosts his credibility as a scientist creating a realistic scene. Differently Dillard continues her artistic style by ending with a rhetorical question of "Could tiny birds be sifting through me right now... ?" Dillard does not expect an answer but lets the idea sit in the readers minds, as if she is asking what if nature is inside of