Theme Of An American Childhood From Annie Dillard

The memoir An American Childhood from Annie Dillard is a truly remarkable memoir. Dillard takes the reader through her childhood years all the way to her teenage years and concludes the memoir when she is about to depart. Throughout this memoir, the reader is exposed to the intensity of Dillard’s curiosity. Within this curiosity, the theme of exploration comes to life. Dillard’s constant need to explore and fulfill her dire curiousness are shown throughout the memoir through her actions and the knowledge she acquires from them. The actions Dillard partakes in and the knowledge she acquires from them is part of the theme of exploration that is so prominent in this memoir. Exploration plays a huge role in Dillard’s coming of age. Through Dillard’s

The first example of this curiosity that the reader is aware to is when Dillard starts to wonder about the differences of skin in youth and seniors. Young Dillard noticed that the appearance of skin on youth was much more appealing, healthier, and fitted to the bones than the skins on seniors such as her parents and grandparents. Dillard describes her view on the differences of the skin by saying “we children had, for instance, proper hands; our fluid, pliant fingers joined their skin. Adults had misshapen, knuckly hands loose in their skin like bones in bags…” (24). Dillard’s curiosity on this topic led to her exploration of her mother’s and father’s fingers and face to inspect the skin on them. With her mother’s fingers, Dillard “picked up a transverse pinch of skin over the knuckle…and let it drop” (24). Her exploration led her to the skin on her mother’s face which she “pushed at a puddle of it by her nose” (25). The theme of exploration is furthered in this example as Dillard goes on to inspect the skin on many different parts of her parent’s bodies such as their arm, legs, shinbones, and toes. Throughout this exploration, Dillard learns that what children find as important and fascinating, adults could have no sort of interest in at all. Dillard’s understanding of this concept arises when she spots a mark on her mother face and when she informs her mother about the mark, her mother responds with ‘’’ do I?’” (26) and her

The role of exploration is quite like a gate keeper. Her desire to explore opens up the gate, which allows for her to be able to learn or gain an understanding of the concept at hand. This is the case when she’s exploring the differences in skin between youth/adults and she ends up understanding that adults and children have totally different interests. Also with the case of her exploration on the amoeba and trying to get her parents to join in, the gate is open. This exploration opens the gate to help her realizes that her parents would be there for support but wouldn’t actually get involved directly with her activities. Essentially what she chose to do was her own and she would be involved in it alone because everybody has different private passions. In An American Childhood, the theme and role of exploration is able to help suffice the motif of