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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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An Occurrence at Owl Creek is a prime example of the power of imagery. A story about the hanging of a man who supported the Confederate cause during the Civil War and acted against the North leading to his immediate execution. This story effectively uses imagery with consistency, appealing to all senses and types of imagery, Visual imagery pertains to the sense of sight, tactile to touch, olfactory to smell, aural to sounds, and gustatory to taste. The utilization of descriptive words, relatable situations, or physical feelings allows this story to formulate an undeniable image with palpable feelings, sights and sounds. .

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In her essay “Seeing,” Annie Dillard is trying to show us a different way of perceiving things, or “seeing,” things. She wants readers to slow down and take the time to actually see what they are looking at. She believes that readers will find a million little delightful details if only they could learn how to step away from the generalizations that have been formed in their minds. She captures the essence of what she is trying to convey with her quote, “There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises” (17), which carries readers back to the beginning of her essay and the pennies that she would leave for whomever would take the time to find them. She believes that nature is full of free gifts for everyone to discover.

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In The Puzzle of Experience, J. J. Valberg argues that, concerning the content of our visual experience, there is contention between the answer derived from reasoning and that found when 'open to experience '. The former leads to the conviction that a physical object can never be “the object of experience,” while with the latter “all we find is the world” (18). After first clarifying what is meant by 'object of experience ', the 'problematic reasoning ' will then be detailed. Afterwards, it will be explained how being 'open to experience ' opposes the reasoning, as well as why the resulting “puzzle” cannot be easily resolved. Lastly, a defence of Valberg 's argument will be offered on the grounds that it relevantly captures how we understand our visual

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Annie Dillard’s essay “Sight into Insight” emphasizes how one must live in the moment and not sway towards others opinions in order to gain accurate observations on a situation. She uses nature as a prominent theme in her essay to represent the thought of looking past the superficial obvious in order to go deeper to where the hidden beauty rests. Dillard wants the reader to realize in order to observe clearly you have to live in the moment and let go of the knowledge you think you know on the situation. Dillard uses the example of her “walking with a camera vs walking without one” (para.31) and how her own observations differed with each. When she walked with the camera she “read the light” (para.31), and when she didn’t “light printed” (para.31).

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