Essay Annie Dillards Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - 3011 Words

Annie Dillards Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 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†¦show more content†¦. .lest our eyes be blasted forever (23). She alludes here to the monotheistic concept of the taboo gaze, the forbidden direct stare into the face of God. In the preceding paragraph, she discover[s] the mystery (22) of the clouds. Able to perceive them only in the refle ctive water below, blind to the originals that cast the duplicates, she wonders if maybe the ark of the covenant was just passing by (22). The trunk in which Moses stored the Ten Commandments also provided the throne of God within the Tabernacle; he presides from atop the ark between two cherubim, in unapproachable light (I Timothy 6:16, Psalm 104:2). As they avoid pronouncing the name of God, believers must also shy away from this brightness. Dillard evokes these mystical taboos to express the irony of human love. Elsewhere she tells the story of a moth consumed by a flame, calling to mind the Sufi symbol for mortal love and the mystical path spiked with danger. The religious symbols also provoke ideas of spirituality that elevate the significance of Dillards worldly visions. The references are vital, because her experiences in nature do not connote spiritual presence as they once did. As GaryMcIlroy points out in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and the Burden of Science, American nature writing used to involve pureShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Annie Dillards Pilgrim At Tinker Creek1595 Words   |  7 PagesAnnie Dillard’s effective use of language and style reflect and further the opinions she voices within â€Å"Pilgrim at Tinker Creek†. She knows how to reel the audience in and then strengthens her points with such detailed descriptions of every little thing. A common theme throughout this classic is about seeing and gaining the ability to be able to see things for their beauty and what they really are. Dillard also wants her audience to see the things that are usually not noticeable or sometimes evenRead MoreAnnie Dillard Essays861 Words   |  4 Pages   Hosford  1   Caitlind  Hosford   King   English   8  April  2014   From  Backyard  Painter  to  World ­Famous  Writer   Annie  Dillard  was  born  on  April  30,  1945  as  Meta  Ann  Doak  in  Pittsburgh,   Pennsylvania.  She  was  pushed  by  her  high  school  teachers  and  attended  Hollins  College  in   Roanoke,  Virginia.  Dillard  studied  literature  and  creative  writing.  Sometime  in  her  first  two   years  at  school  she  met  Richard  Dillard,  who  she  would  be  engaged  to  marry  her  sophomore  year   of  college.  After  she  graduated,  she  married  and  moved  in  with  her  husbandRead MoreHow Does One Find the Miraculous in the Common? Essay example1187 Words   |  5 Pagescomparison, although Transcendentalist poet Ralph Waldo Emerson would call the previous statement a fallacy. This is due to his belief of finding the miraculous in the common as â€Å"the invariable mark of wisdom†. Emerson along with Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard all answered in regards to finding such miracles. These three authors have displayed their reasoning in their popular works. With the works of Self Reliance and Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson defined how one would find the miraculous in theRead MoreCompare And Contrast The Writing Process Of Annie Dillard And Stephen King1050 Words   |  5 PagesEvery writer has a particular way to describe their writing. Whether they describe it as a form of telepathy like the distinguished author, Stephen King, or as a painting like the renowned author, Annie Dillard, an abundance of writers can compare their process of writing to something. Even I have some way to describe my writing, I believe it is like being an architect creating marvelous building and cities made of words. This paper is meant to explain the writing process of the two aforementionedRead MoreFreedom Is The Most Important Freedom Essay1693 Words   |  7 Pagessimilar to the Nepali women living in today’s century. In a scholarly article, Violence Against Women: Nepal’s Situation, written by Professor Dr. Yubraj Sangroula, shows the state of Nepali women living in Nepal. In the memoir, Pilgrim at the Tinker Creek, the female writer Annie Dillard writes about her experiences of exploring nature in 1970’s USA; The US had been providing personal freedom equally to its citizens. The scholarly article, Through Pardah: Social Criticism in Women’s Folksongs from Mithilia