Juxtaposition In Annie Dillard's Ran American Childhood

Childhood is the very building block of life. It's where we all start and where many problems, successes, and traits that appear later in life can be drawn back to. The people we meet, the memories we make, and the lessons we learn in childhood shape who we are. The importance of childhood boils down to select instances that stand out to us as age fades into our memories. In Annie Dillard's short story, ¨An American Childhood,¨ she, through her informal tone puts the reader in her shoes portraying moments in her life when words or phrases stood out to her. She portrayed these phrases with an unusual amount of significance and utilizes anecdotes and juxtaposition to emphasize the importance of naming things. She shows how the way things are

Dillard highlights this juxtaposition while reflecting on her family trip over the Tamiami Trail. Dillard first talks about the creation of the Tamiami Trail stating,¨Then—the height of visionary ambition 45 and folly—they piled a slow, tremendous road through the terrible Everglades to connect them.¨ She later talks about the naming of the Trail criticizing the name it was given by saying, "Then capping it all, some genius thought of the word Tamiami: they called the road from Tampa to Miami.¨ Stating the trail was, ¨the height of visionary ambition,¨ adds importance to the trail emphasizing how significant a project was when it was built. Calling it visionary specifically adds the connotation that the project was ahead of its time. This is important as modern technology has advanced since the time the trail was built it is easy to overlook how revolutionary the project was. The word ambition also alludes to the fact that the construction of the Tamiami trail was ahead of its time and not an easy feat. In her description of the building of the word, she describes it as "slow, tremendous, and terrible.¨ Dillard uses these descriptions to emphasize the difficulties that workers encountered and overcame to complete the trial. Dillards use of multiple descriptors regarding the construction of the trail contributes to the idea that it was a grand project that many people suffered working on. Dillard greatly contrasts her description of the awe-inspiring feat in her description of its naming. She sarcastically calls the person who named it, ¨some genius¨ showing her disappointment for the amount of thought put into the name. Her lack of respect for the person who named the trail goes to show how unfitting the name is, and what a defeat it is that the hardship that went into the trail is not reflected in the trail's