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Seeing In Annie Dillard's Pilgrim At Tinker Creek

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Seeing The experience of seeing for Annie Dillard (author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek) is not taken for granted. She fully understands the value and depth sight provides. To Dillard, “Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization.” She builds on this by saying, “Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won’t see it.” This quote fully ecompases Dillard’s unique perspective on seeing. Seeing to her is a skill built on experience and knowledge. For this reason, Dillard uses the second chapter of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek to persuade her readers that seeing must be sought after. Dillard’s frequent use of imagery in nature and personal accounts merge to create her convincing argument. Fully understanding Dillard’s unique perspective on seeing requires basic knowledge of her thought process. Living in a house on Tinker Creek made Dillard especially fond of nature. The intrigue of nature and the world around her coincides with many religious …show more content…

For one to stop and see they must know what they are looking for. Both experience and knowledge are needed to correctly assess what is being seen. This overall understanding is known as the artificial obvious. Correctly seeing is not taking objects at face value, but rather identifying the objects many characteristics and traits. Dillard persuades this to her audience through explicit argument using well explained examples. Dillard refers back to the theme of light and dark when writing about former blind people receiving surgery to see. After the patient's bandages were torn off, the once flat and spaceless world they had perceived was brought into light. Many of the patients could now make out objects, but could not actively distinguish what something actually was. This complication was due to their lack of former experience. They did not know what to look for due to their prior absence of

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