The author of Living Like Weasels, Annie Dillard, describes the nature of a weasel, and how people should have a similar nature to a weasel. Dillard notes that a weasel is wild, sleeps underground for days without leaving, and has an unpredictable thought process. It will stalk small mammals (killing too many bodies than it plans to eat), and will, following its instinct, bite its prey at the neck (splitting veins) or attack the base of the skull (crunching at the brain) and refuses to let go. One particular naturalist refused to kill a weasel he could not pry from his hand deeply; he had to walk to a water source nearby, and drown it off from his hand.
Ernest Thompson Seton remembers an eagle was shot out of the sky with the bones of a weasel fixed by the
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She came to Hollins Pond to forget about the troubles of life, instead of learning how to live. How can one learn how to live from a wild animal, however? Should she stalk and suck blood from her prey? Hold her tail high? Live underground for days upon end? Instead, she should learn something about living without bias or motive, and living in the physical world. The weasel lives in necessity, and humans live in choice, hating necessity when brought up. Dillard would like to live as a weasel does by noticing everything around her, yet remembering nothing, and live in the moment.
She missed her chance, and should have gone for the weasel’s throat. She should have held on to its throat, never letting go through the mud and rose-bush. They could have lived under the wild rose-bush and could ‘calmly go wild’. She could have lived two days underground in her den. This is where she can go back to her senses, in the wild. Muteness, however, is a ‘giddy fast’, where time is simply unregarded. Dillard wonders if two could live underneath the rose-bush, explore by the pond, so the mind is smooth in the
She can’t remember what she hears and moves from one thing to the next. She disregards everything she has just heard. She uses the parlor to escape from reality but forgets and never finds what is really important in
She was sixteen...Where were the singing bees for her? Nothing on the place nor in her grandma's house answered her. She searched... looking, waiting, breathing short with impatience. Waiting for the world to be made”(11).
Surviving Impossibilities Survival is the act of surviving and doing what is required to lived; sociology has a theory called “Social Darwinism.” Social Darwinism could be broken down to one phrase, survival of the fittest. The notion survival of the fittest implies that those who are successful were meant to be successful and those who are not successful were meant to be in the situation they are in, the key is adapt and survive. M.K. Asante Jr. did just that in his memoir Buck. Buck is about the life of an inner city Philadelphia young black male who faced many obstacles and this young boy was able to overcome his circumstances.
Author – Lynda Hull is the author of the poem “The Night Waitress”. Hull had been developing an impressive career in Literature when she died in a car accident. She was influenced heavily by Hart Crane, she had allegedly memorized his poems, as well as jazz musicians. Hull taught English in many universities and also served as Poetry Editor for a journal.
Everyone has done something in their life that they have deeply regretted and mostly refer back to their childhood. However, from a young age a person may not understand the issue until they grow into an adult. The author, Susan Perabo shows this to be especially true in her short story “The Payoff”. The use of the main characters Anne and Louise reveal how unwise a young mind can be in realizing the most simple of things. However, through the use of these characters an important message is suddenly conveyed over the story.
She purposefully attacks religious beliefs because if we are able to separate ourselves from our beliefs, then we are allowing ourselves to become more liberal about other ideas. By being less conservative, we can lead simpler lives without the complications of religious rules. In the essay In The Jungle, Dillard gambles with the idea of being more adventurous and closer to nature. She writes, “We are in this planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place”
The character Penny is a protagonist in Byatt’s story “The Thing in the Forest”, and is presented in two lives or stages: childhood and adulthood. As a little girl, Penny is described as “thin and dark and taller, probably older than Primrose, and had a bloodless transparent paleness with a touch of blue in her lips” (Byatt 3). In the later stages of the story, Penny is described as having a “transparent face that had lost detail – cracked lipstick, fine lines of wrinkles – and looked both younger and greyer, less substantial” (Byatt 12). This later description can be taken as a representation of the battering from life that Penny had taken from the encounter with the thing to separation and placement with strange families, a predicament shared by Primrose who now had the same
In detailing the events that led up to her change in perspective, she made note of the honeysuckle that covered the walls of the well-house, the warm sunshine that accompanied going outdoors, and the cool stream of water that she felt as she placed her hand under the spout. These details kept the reader with her in the moment as she felt something less simple, but still universal; the returning of a, “ misty consciousness as of something forgotten.” In using rich diction, she maintained a sense of intimacy with the reader which allowed her to call on personal details from her own life and theirs. Later in the passage, she described how, once the reality of language was opened to her, and she returned to the house, “every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life.” She had gone through a complete shift of perspective, one that, to her, was felt entirely through senses other than sight or sound.
Additionally, the narrator realizes her consciousness is constantly changing as she “loves the thing untouched by lore…the thing that is not cultivated… the thing built up” (473). The narrator’s consciousness faces another struggle between trying to find equal good in both the culture of her people and the new culture that has been introduced to her. Yet, she stands boldly “one foot in the dark, the other in the light” (473), as she forms a bridge between the two cultures and is stuck while she tries to understand her sense of self. Finally, the silent voice, a metaphor for her faith, calls out to her.
His choice and stylistic manipulation of words creates a significant effect on passing his purpose onto us of the alluring beauty of nature. The author uses an intriguing word choice when he states,”...world is not nearly big enough and that any portion of its surface, left unpaved and alive, is infinitely rich in details and relationships, in wonder, beauty, mystery, comprehensible only in part.” Throughout this sentence, he uses many words to help the reader picture even a slight glimpse of what he is talking about throughout the essay. Abbey describes how every portion of nature not taken over by humans has endless details to find if you just stop to glimpse even for a minute. With this word choice, Abbey effectively makes the readers fascinated with the possibilities they could find from exploring
Living Like Weasels Rhetorical Analysis In her essay “Living Like Weasels”, Annie Dillard explores the idea of following a single calling in life, and attaching one’s self it this calling as the weasel on Ernest Thompson Seton’s eagle had. Dillard presents her argument using the analogy of a weasel and how the; “weasel lives as he’s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity” (Dillard). In constructing her argument, however, she often contradicts herself undermining the effectiveness of her argument and leaving the reader confused. Dillard primarily uses ethos and pathos to support her argument and concerning both, the reader discovers; inconsistencies in her character, and conflicts between her perceptions
Annabelle must grow up in this situation because she outside in the dark by herself
“Our love affair with our pets has gotten out of control” (Bilger 10). Burkhard Bilger is the author of the literary non-fiction piece, “The Last Meow”, that was published in The New Yorker September 8, 2003. He explains the extent people are willing to go for their animals and pay any amount of money no matter how much it may cost. According to Bilger, pet owners spend about forty seven billion dollars a year on their pets, that ranges from food all the way to surgeries.
From that it can be concluded, once a wild animal, always a wild animal regardless of the situation because instincts stick. The text also states “A wild animal is never 100 percent predictable” (Lewis). Therefore, the nature of a wild animal and even the actions of a wild animal is never really known. Wild animals always have instincts
She stayed with her family, until she was eventually brought to the Adams County Almshouse. Here, for forty years, she lived in a basket of straw. Her limbs became drawn up until her knees almost touched her chin. She was placed in a box that had holes for any excretions to drop out of. Rats and terrible small creatures made nests by her box because of this.