“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?” These words of John Steinbeck perfectly illustrate the necessity of contrast in the world to give meaning to one’s life. Just like Steinbeck, Annie Dillard uses specific contrasts to depict her world view before and after the total eclipse.
In the beginning of Dillard’s essay, “Total Eclipse”, she described “sliding down the mountain pass” to get to her hotel in central Washington. As she observed her surroundings of the drive, she made the simile of being like “a diver in the rapture of the deep who plays on the bottom while his air runs out.” This ominous comparison warned the reader of unexpected peril. Dillard used the motif of depth and descending many
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She starts by describing the darkness of the hotel that she and her husband are staying in. She stated that “the hotel lobby was a dark derelict room”. Dillard describes the “growing light” and the “rising sun” on her journey to the hilltop where she would view the total eclipse. She described how some orchards “lighted up”. Years before, Dillard had seen a partial eclipse and she said that “the sky does not darken” and that the sky’s color would get deeper but it did not actually go dark until the sun was completely eclipsed. Once the sun was covered, “it was dark night.” The only light showing in the sky was the thin ring of light from the corona peering from behind the black circle that was the moon. Everything was dark and black and in what was supposed to be broad daylight, Dillard could see cars below her turning on their headlights. She later described the shadow that overcame them during the eclipse. She said that screams were heard from the hilltop, because of the unsettling speed and abruptness at which the shadow came over them. Soon after, the sun reemerged and brought normalcy back to the spectators. Although, the eclipse was a sight to behold, once Dillard could go back home she did not turn back around, and she fled to the