Narrative Voice In Annie Dillard's Pilgrim At Tinker Creek

When needing to retreat, Annie Dillard goes to Tinker Creek and immerses herself in nature. During one of these trips, she has a snippet of a revelation, which makes her see beauty and ugliness in harmony and see the world as meaningful; even though there is sorrow. In this passage, Dillard uses the symbolism of a maple key and similes to explain its descend as something beautiful, seeing the positive in the negative.

The use of imagery builds the story and expresses how important Dillard's childhood was in shaping the women she has become today . The excerpt begins with a reflection upon her childhood and growing up a tomboy. Dillard set the stage for “the chase” by explaining the day as “cloudy but cold” (5) with cars lining the snow covered street. Imagery is used not only to set the stage for the day of “the chase” but it is also used to describe the man chasing them as a city man dressed in “a suit and tie, street shoes” (10). Using imagery to describe the man’s appearance helps the reader to understand how unusual the man's appearance was and that the man was chasing them through the city. Dillard builds the suspense of “the chase” by taking the reader through the motions, past a “...yellow house...under a low tree, up a bank, through a hedge…” (12), she builds an image in our minds of the neighborhood. The imagery is used to build up the scene, convey suspense and create emotions for the reader.

Darkness is a recurring image in literature that evokes a universal unknown, yet is often entrenched in many meanings. A master poet, Emily Dickinson employs darkness as a metaphor many times throughout her poetry. In “We grow accustomed to the dark” (#428) she talks of the “newness” that awaits when we “fit our Vision to the Dark.” As enigmatic and shrouded in mystery as the dark she explores, Dickinson's poetry seems our only door to understanding the recluse. As she wrote to her friend T.W. Higginson on April 15, 1862, “the Mind is so near itself – it cannot see, distinctly”(Letters 253). In this musing, she acquiesces to a notion that man remains locked in an internal struggle with himself. This inner

She became accustomed to the perception of a desert being portrayed as dull and lifeless (Being raised in Kentucky) until this trip. Throughout this scene, she expresses her fascination for nature, and uses a tone of awe and allurement while describing the attributes about the land with metaphors. This narration occurred following the first rainfall, when Mattie and Taylor decided to go to the desert. This passage which is distinctive of Kingsolver’s portrayal of the natural landscape shows her sudden awareness diverse atmospheres. By linking to the scenery to “the palm of a human hand”, the author uses the literary device of personification with the mountains and the town. Her phrase “resting in its cradle of mountains” associates the basin to a child, and the phrases “city like a palm”and“life lines and heart lines hints a grown-up. The terrain exemplifies a life from the beginning to end. Taylor describes the land my linking each attribute with lots of metaphors, which then confirms that the tone is “wonder and allurement” because it demonstrates that she is emotionally connected to the

Dillard had an appreciation for the world and history, especially anything that had to do with Pittsburg or her family. Her father wanted to help in the Second World War but he was not allowed, and had he been she might not have been born. Her birthday was the day that Hitler died, basically the end of the war, and her father had not joined the fight oversees, instead choosing to help watch for air raids in Pittsburgh.

Both Anne Dillard and Gordon Grice develop a unique perspective on life based on their observations of nature in their essays “Living Like Weasels” and “The Black Widow.” In “Living Like Weasels,” Dillard meditates on the value and necessity of instinct and tenacity in human life. Meanwhile, in “The Black Widow,” Grice offers a philosophical perspective on life, which grows out of his close observation of the black widow spider. Both essays urge readers to reflect on their experiences with nature and learn from what Mother Nature is showing them.

Dillard uses descriptions of her experience to flow with the story using metaphors and other ways of conveying her message about life and death. Through this she allowed us to peer into her life in that moment and convey the feeling she felt indirectly through the descriptions. This makes the text effective because it causes the reader to look at oneself about life and death and the other topics that could come from the essay. This gives her credibility because she experienced it first hand (ethos, pathos). Playing on your emotion from person experience with death. Making the text more effective.

Annie Dillard opens Pilgrim at Tinker Creek mysteriously, hinting at an unnamed presence. She toys with the longstanding epic images of battlefields and oracles, injecting an air of holiness and awe into the otherwise ordinary. In language more poetic than prosaic, she sings the beautiful into the mundane. She deifies common and trivial findings. She extracts the most high language from all the possible permutations of words to elevate and exalt the normal. Under her pen, her literary devices and her metaphors, a backyard stream becomes a shrine. Writing a prayer, Dillard becomes an instrument through which a ubiquitous spirit reveals itself. Yet in other cases, she latches on to an image

In “Evening Over Sussex: Reflections in a Motor Car” by Virginia Woolf, the narrator is riding in a car through the landscape of Sussex, as the day is approaching nightfall. In this 'journey', she appears to be depressed, due to the thought of aging. She then looks back into the past, contemplating her experiences, but develops a change in thought, changing from melancholy to delight, that changes her meaning of life.

As a reader, it is important to be aware of the impact of the narrative voice in a text. Discuss in relation to the narrative voice in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.

One can suggest that Atwood has demonstrated a light and informal tone. The poem is more informal in its writing, leaning more towards intimate entertainment. In her writing, the author is able to capture the attention of her readers by giving real-life situations that one may relate to.

Contrary to many people, including Woolf’s, beliefs, death is not the end of life. The moth becomes bigger than itself. It was a normal moth, yet its untimely death benefitted Dillard. Though reading a book may not be considered great, Dillard enjoys it, and would not have been able to enjoy it without the ultimate sacrifice performed by the mere moth, which became bigger in a single moment.

Dillard effectively uses concrete imagery as a way of conveying her inner struggle to the reader in a handful of ways. In the first paragraph, she paints a vivid picture in the reader’s mind by writing “while barred owls called in the forest and pale moths seeking mates

of this can be seen from the very first page of her book. Here, she begins to tell the story of traveling back to her old neighborhood, only to find it to be “a distinctly poorer one” than it was in her childhood days (1). To recreate the image for her readers, she presents them with a picture of what she compares to be likened to “a third-world country” She explains that “some of the stores had “rusted iron bars across their windows” while other businesses had been closed down and nailed up. She tells of several houses in the area having “boarded-up windows” and “graffiti, broken glass, and trash” strewn about, even though it appeared people were still living there. By painting a picture for her audience the author is able to virtually take them to the very road she once

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, written by Annie Dillard, is a novel based on the writers