Living Like Weasels By Annie Dillard

America’s answer for dealing with crime prevention is locking up adult offenders in correctional facilities with little rehabilitation for reentry into society. American response for crime prevention for juvenile’s offenders is the same strategy used against adult offenders taken juvenile offenders miles away from their environment and placed in adult like prisons.

A Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash definitely fits the category of “grit lit.” It is a novel about the Hall’s, a family who is wracked with grief, anxiety, and guilt after the ‘mysterious’ death of one of their sons, Christopher or Stump. The story encompasses more than just the story of the family though as it is told from the perspective of Adelaide Lyle, an old wise woman from the town, Jess Hall the youngest son of the family, and Clem Barefield, the sheriff of Marshall who also had heartache of his own that is intertwined with this families story in more ways than one. The novel incorporates most if not all of the features that is “grit lit” including: an element of crime, a focus on the bleakness of life, lyrical language, and a central character who wishes to escape their environment or get peace inside it.

The concept of free will is essential in topics related to choice. The way people live their lives is constructed by decisions they make on a daily basis, such as whether or not to attend a college classes or what job to choose in the future. But in “Living Like Weasels”, Annie Dillard realizes that the concept of free will is not pure. Society has a tendency to drive an individual’s choice based on what is the norm. Through her observations of a weasel, Dillard makes a commentary on the relationship between people and free will. In “Living Like Weasels”, Annie Dillard uses the analysis of a weasel to remind society about the often overlooked power of free will embedded in human nature.

Two perspectives exist within fox-hunting, they either hate fox-hunting as they believe it is a horrendous form of animal cruelty or they think that foxes aren’t like other domesticated animals and their lives are not worth anything anyway. From a young age of 12 I took an interest in the differences between foxes and dogs. I wondered why dogs receive domestication and the other doesn’t; why humans can brutally murder foxes and the other acquires the title “man’s best friend.”

Nellie Bly was born May 5th, 1864 in a small town called Cochran Mills in Pennsylvania. Nellie’s real name is Elizabeth Cochrane. Nellie was a Journalist; she began her newspaper career at the age of 18. Nellie got her pseudonym from her editor, who refused to openly allow a female to write for his paper.

As the deer fed at the marsh's edge, it's tail flickering as it nibbled tender and ripe green growth. Then the nervous animal pauses in it's feeding and lifted its head to listen. Whatever hint of danger the deer had sensed was ignored once the threat could not be located. It stamped a forefoot, lowered its head and began to eat once more, this deer had failed to detect a Florida panther that was downwind (going into the wind) crouched low in the underbrush. Amber eyes however, estimated the distance between himself and the deer. Then at the right moment attacked the deer, with bounds at over twenty feet at a time the panther exploded out of the underbrush pouncing on the deer and forcing it to the ground. Within fifteen seconds that

“But, I 'm already resigned to this fate / Looking over my life, I recall / If it hadn 't been / for the loneliness / I 'd have no companion at all. ” This stanza from “Loneliness”, by Lora Colon evokes the negative impact a lonely fate has on a person. Words like “resigned” and “loneliness” establish a sense of depression and resignation. During the times of the Great Depression, many people felt similar feelings of melancholy and stoicism. Jobs were hard to come by, and realistic dreams of success were scarce. John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men, allows readers to see the life of the Great Depression. The two main characters, George and Lennie, search for jobs, like many other migrant workers. They dream of owning their own land, however, Lennie’s habit of getting in trouble prevents their dream from being reality. After he accidentally causes more trouble at their new job, George is forced to kill him out of mercy. Throughout the novel, Steinbeck shows that even if one meticulously plans out the road to their American Dream, fate will inevitably intervene and lead one to desolation and loneliness.

In “Living Like Weasels,” Annie Dillard recalls an encounter with a weasel and connects the weasel’s tenacity to the human pursuit of one’s calling. In a forest, Dillard describes the encounter with the weasel when they lock eyes; she then explains what is inside of the weasel’s brain, his habits and traits. (MS7) She explains that a weasel’s living is one desire: instinct, a weasel’s tenacity to lock onto its prey and to not let go. Dillard then compares the weasel’s tenacity with the human calling; humans urge to understand their calling and refuse to quit until they have achieved their goal. Additionally, Dillard offers an exhortation to live in obedience to that calling. (MS6) As well as obedience, instinct requires the human capacity for reason.

Animal hunting is not only inhumane but can also lead to the extinction of many species. In the essay “Our Animal Rites”, Quindlen asserts that it is “pathetic to consider the firepower” the hunters use in order to “bring down one fair-sized deer” (33). In this quote, she explains that the use of firepower by human to kill innocent animals is unfair and heartrending. Furthermore, Quindlen describes that even though the bears are killed by the “smiling” and triumphant hunters after the “three bear days in the autumn,” the bears look “more dignified than they do” (33). This suggests that hunting animals is not entertaining but rather unacceptable and disgraceful. Furthermore, many species can become extinct due to excessive hunting. In an ecology class, I learned that the extinction rate of species each year is approximately two hundred to two thousand each year. This is an extremely high and alerting rate since there is only around two million species that has been scientifically identified on the planet. In these examples, it can be concluded that the hunting of innocent animals is atrocious and

Published in 1997, Marie Howe’s anthology of poems, What the Living Do was written as an elegy to her brother, John, who passed away due to AIDS. Howe’s anthology is written without metaphor to document the loss she felt after her brother’s death. Although What the Living Do is written as an anthology, this collection allows for individual poems to stand alone but also to work together to tell an overarching story. Using the poetic devices of alliteration, enjambment, repetition and couplets, Howe furthers her themes of gender and loss throughout her poems in her anthology.

Within Aldo Leopold’s Thinking Like a Mountain and Annie Dillard’s Living Like a Weasel there is a communal theme, which incorporates the conflict between people and nature. Throughout Dillard’s piece, she uses comparisons between the life of humans and the life of a wild weasel while applying the theme of freedom of choice. After an unexpected encounter with a weasel, Dillard concludes that humans can learn from the wild freedom of weasel. She states, “...I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive” (Dillard 8). In Aldo Leopold’s writing, his overall motive is to communicate to the reader that we humans must not destroy the wilderness, as

Unlike animals, humans are able to observe past the mere monochromatic vision of survival. We have an impeccable ability to desire more than just living to breed, and breeding only to someday perish. Thus, we gradually brush this canvas with the colours of ethics, control, and knowledge. Whether the colours fade or become prominent through time, this canvas becomes our perception of normality and we allow it to justify our actions; favorable or harmful. We, as well as the narrator in the short story The Hunt by Josephine Donovan represent this. However, because of the narrator’s difference in perception, self-indulgence, and greed for power, the story introduces a feeling of infuriation to the reader.

“I’m panicking Tommy, I have cold feet, the Big Bad Hawk is outside the house, I’m coming over,” he cried! Tommy knew to unlock the door. Timmy scampered over to Tommy’s house and when he got Jared had got a glimpse of Timmy. Following hot on Timmy’s tail Jared maneuvered through the trees and wound up at the second brother’s house and he demanded, “Let me in now or I will kill you!” While the brothers were losing all hope of survival because the door crashed down Timmy remembered what he did at his own house and called Jommi and told him they were coming over. When they arrived at Jommi’s house they left the door unlocked, but they were hiding in a bush. When Jared dashed in the house he heard the doors lock shut. All of the sudden the walls started closing in. The last thing the Mice heard was a shriek

With ears pricked up, the fox listens for its food’s cries. A cool breeze blows toward the fox carrying the birds’ scent and disguising the fox’s presence, it is a hidden spectre with malicious intentions. Its glass-like amber eyes free of guilt and only focused on its prey, they don’t show emotion they just give a dead stare. Every movement is planned, nothing ever left to chance. The fox is poised to pounce, its body close to the ground with the fur on its belly brushing against leaf

In writing, from fables to novels, animals are very often utilized by writers to present an analogy to human behaviour. One the many intertwining themes in Margaret Atwood's novel Surfacing criticises the heedless exploitation of nature caused by corruption of human behaviour. The landscape and the animals are used in connection with this theme.