The Oxford English Dictionary defines “awe” as “a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.” The author, Annie Dillard, shows awe toward the eclipse in the passage “Total Eclipse” by using metaphors to enhance the telling of the experience to the reader. For example, in paragraph 6, the author states, “There is no world. We were the world’s dead people, rotating and orbiting around and around.” This metaphor shows that, to the author, the eclipse was a surreal experience, and she felt as if the world had stopped and she had died. She used this metaphor to show her sense of awe and further immerse the reader in how she had felt, so maybe they could feel the same existential dread that she had started to feel. In addition,