Annie Dillard

In “Good Country People,” by Flannery O’Connor, the protagonist’s internal struggle with her identity stems from both an undiagnosed mental disorder and a lack of parental guidance since her traumatic accident. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) causes 32-year-old Joy Hopewell to be a perpetual teenager, which affects her relationships as an adult. In addition, Joy’s mother's parenting style was based off of pity from the accident resulting in an absence of guidance during Joy’s formative years. As a teenager, Joy gets accustomed to receiving unsolicited pity from everyone, which burdens her later in life. Thus, by being pitied, Joy expresses discontent with her life by acting out in a rebellious state. Joy becomes resentful of everyone and has no sympathy for people because they do not accept her. The lasting

In No Way Out, Waverly Duck examines an urban neighborhood referred to as Bristol Hill, where the drug trade is prevalent among the residents. Duck challenges the popular misconception that these communities characterized by the drug trade, crime, and violence are tumultuous areas with no social order. Duck argues that the residents of this community have created an interaction order that is a complex social organization that allows for survival in such dangerous conditions. For seven years, Duck lived on Lyford Street in Bristol Hill, and his theory is built on his personal experiences and information gathered from residents in this community. Through residents’ personal narratives of their experiences and detailed observations, Duck validates his theory and shows how social order exists in these communities.

The novel Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell presents a series of vignettes about a wife, mother, and socialite who finds herself trapped in a materialistic society. Via her ordinary encounters (less the robbery incident) readers understand how the meaningless cultural forces of materialism and class expectations can lead to people feeling trapped. This idea also presents itself through the character of Sapphira Colbert in Willa Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl. However, when one ignores class focusing on kindness instead, happiness is truly attainable as seen in Shadows on the Rock.

Annie Dillard’s essay “Sight into Insight” emphasizes how one must live in the moment and not sway towards others opinions in order to gain accurate observations on a situation. She uses nature as a prominent theme in her essay to represent the thought of looking past the superficial obvious in order to go deeper to where the hidden beauty rests. Dillard wants the reader to realize in order to observe clearly you have to live in the moment and let go of the knowledge you think you know on the situation. Dillard uses the example of her “walking with a camera vs walking without one” (para.31) and how her own observations differed with each. When she walked with the camera she “read the light” (para.31), and when she didn’t “light printed” (para.31).

In “Seeing” by Annie Dillard, Dillard argues that there is more than one way to see the world. To allow oneself to enjoy the simple wonders and life a pleasurable life, one must see the world properly. Dillard begins “Seeing” with a story from when she was young about pennies. How she would hide them, wishing and wondering about how later on they would be found by strangers. She continues to recount multiple stories about bullfrogs and darkness to emphasize the different ways of seeing the world and how it affects the observer.

Hardships as a child allow the opportunity to develop a thick skin and become resilient. From a young age, Jeannette Walls and her siblings learned how to be independent for their basic needs because of their father’s, Rex, alcoholism, and their mother, Rose Mary’s, carefree attitude and indulgence in the arts. Their attitude

From new and upcoming author, Edward P. Jones, comes his first short story The First Day.

In the auto-biographical excerpt from Ornithological Biographies by John James Audubon, he depicts his intriguing encounter with the wild pigeons of Ohio, while in Annie Dillard's engaging excerpt from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she illustrates her thought-provoking observation of the Starling roost migration. Both writers had an overriding passion that showed through in the diction, tone, and syntax of their pieces. Because of these different infatuations both authors use different literary devices that match their feelings of how they view the birds and how the birds affected them.

In the first chapter of Beverly Tatum’s, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”, And Other Conversations About Race, the author immediately clarifies that racism is not a thing of the past. People in today’s society are merely raised with racial concepts at such a young age that they do not realize the injustice going on around them. She reinforces her statement by showing an example of a group of preschoolers who were told to draw a picture of a Native American. Most of the children didn’t even know what a Native American was, but after being told to draw an Indian, complied. Recurring elements in all of their drawings were feathers, along with a violent weapon, such as a knife. The reason for this depiction is because of the Peter Pan film, an example of how the media has a say in racial situations and how people of color are portrayed.

With the mass amount of entertainment and media that gets shoved in our faces on a daily basis, it can be a difficult task to look between the lines and see what’s really going on. While many of our favorite shows, movies, and books seem like light entertainment, they often carry hidden messages meant to sway us into a particular worldview. Blackmail in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, drug abuse and promiscuity in Scooby Doo, and mistrust and paranoia in If You Give A Mouse A Cookie are just a few examples of why we need to be consciously aware of what media is trying to tell us.

In the essay, “The Death of the Moth”, Virginia Woolf uses metaphor to convey that the relationship between life and death is one that is strange and fragile. Woolf tells the story of the life and death of a moth, one that is petite and insignificant. The moth is full of life, and lives life as if merry days and warm summers are the only things the moth knows. However, as the moth enters it’s last moments, it realizes that death is stronger than any other force. As the moth knew life seconds before, it has now deteriorated into death. The moth which had been so full of life, was now dead, showing that the line between life and death is one that is fragile and easy to cross without intention, or expectance.

As I ponder over my life, each memory seems identical to the other, and I find myself drifting through a reality of similar events that generate the same memories and emotions. Looking back further into my childhood includes memories of my homeland. I remember entering a new world at the age of five, where all of my later memories would be formed. This was when my family moved to the United States from Peru, my native country in the South. The complete change in culture and values truly impacted me when I first moved to Florida, and I reflect over the significant effect it has had on my character during the last thirteen years of my life.

Have you ever felt that your view of things change when you get older? Well, that’s how Jacqueline Woodson felt. As we grow and change, so do our perspectives on a variety of things that we experience in life. In the beginning, Woodson introduces that since she got older, her perspective of her once beloved home has changed as a central idea of the story. By observing how her character changes over the course of the plot, it seems evident that Woodson is trying to convey to the reader that a person’s view of things change as one gets older.

There were rice plants on my left and farm animals on my right. I grew up in New York City, so you can imagine the millions of questions that were running through my head. I’d never been to the countryside of the Dominican Republic before, but when I finally did, I couldn’t be more ecstatic, despite the scorching Caribbean sun burning down on my brown skin.

When reading this prompt, "So Mexicans Are Taking American Jobs," by Jimmy Santiago Baca, was the first reading that came to my mind. This poem brought light to the, recently more controversial, subject of the jobs in America. Mexicans are not "taking" Americans' Jobs. They are trying to survive in this world and are willing to work harder than some of the Americans. The workers do not confront American workers and tell them to give them their jobs, nor do they steal them in the middle of the night (Line 1-11). The poem also created a new idea in my mind about the given theme of "The American Experience". The experience is not automatically becoming successful; it is the opportunity to work and support a family freely. To choose how to live,