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Living Like Weasels: The American Dream

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“The quest for success propels persons along diverse life paths. Beckoning is the American Dream.” (Joseph L. DeVitis) In the essay “Living Like Weasels” by Annie Gillard, we see a comparison of the ability to abide by an instinct to a weasel’s routine living conditions to those who live a more submissive life. During the time Gillard wrote “Living Like Weasels”, Due to the essay being non-fiction the time in which Gillard wrote “Living like Weasels” is which the narrator is reflecting upon was significant (Tanemura), in addition, without the narrator’s subjective response it fails to be reality (Newberry). Annie Gillard approach to her essay forces the reader to be aware of the relationship between man-nature. The metaphorical messages that …show more content…

Those groups who are unable to access social order resembles the narrator in the story, reason being both wants to exist in “the dignity of living without bias or motive.” (Dillard) The weasel represents the American dream because “A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.” Gillard uses the weasel as a symbol; ironically she symbolizes its use in two different ways. The weasel represents the superior ethnic group in the American dream because they are “mute and uncomprehending ” to the adversities in which inferior ethic groups who because they cant acquire more cultural capital may never be able obtain the American

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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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Susan B. Neumen’s main purpose or motivation in writing the article, “The American Dream: Slipping Away?” indicates that all children should be trained properly in education. Many people come to America because it captures opportunities and striving for better dreams. Even if they are in poverty or privilege everyone should be given the right resources to absorb and succeed. Although those who have achieve their dreams, the American Dream had become more problematic for many others to accomplish. Neuman also added research and statistics on parents and children in two neighboring cities how they are different.

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This evaluation of style will be examining the essay “Living Like Weasels” by Annie Dillard. Dillard composed her essay as part of a larger collection of short nonfiction narrative essays during the year 1982 when amendments to the original 1972 Wildlife Protection Act of the United States of America took place, in which the original intent being to increase awareness of the compelling need to restore the catastrophic ecological imbalances introduced by the disfigurement inflicted on nature by mankind. Dillard writes with a picturesque style, which aids in Dillard’s intensely detail oriented behavior, as well as her deep concern with the applicability of animal traits to human behaviors. One of the most distinguishing aspects of Dillard’s picturesque

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