How Does Annie Dillard Use Imagery In Living Like Weasels

Annie Dillard's “Living Like Weasels” is a personal essay reflecting the author's interpretation of her first encounter with a wild weasel. From the very beginning, Dillard explains what it is that makes a weasel wild, saying that they, “[stalk] rabbits, mice, muskrats , and birds, killing more bodies than he can eat warm, and often dragging the carcases home” (Dillard, line 2). She uses very violent and visceral imagery and almost exaggerates to the readers how savage they live. Dillard is very clear in mentioning that the bodies are ‘warm’ as the weasel ‘drags’ it home; although written so casually, this can strike the readers as disturbing being that it implies the weasel does not even wait for death to completely consume the body of the prey. She continues to offer a distant naturalistic description of the location where she met the weasel, “under every bush [a] muskrat hole or a beer can...fields and woods, threaded everywhere with motorcycle tracks--in whose bare clay wild turtles lay eggs” (Dillard, lines 15-16). The imagery in these passages is a clear use of

She ends the essay passionately explaining to the readers that she, “[thinks] it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go...Seize it and let it seize you up” (Dillard), and that we should live in the moment as we are; go about life just living and existing, thus allowing the readers to reflect on their own feelings of life and purpose. The overall tone in this essay is very passionate about how people should live their everyday lives, yet informative about weasels and the author's experience. Annie Dillard does a truly amazing job at allowing the reader's an inside look at her thoughts while showing them how a wild animal's behavior can be seen as a lesson to