The Metaphor Of Wake Up In Annie Dillard's An American Childhood

Throughout the book, An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard, Dillard uses the metaphor of waking up to describe herself growing up. Overall, I think Dillard does a good job of representing the different stages of her childhood through this metaphor.
Dillard first mentions the metaphor of waking up stating that “ I was just waking up then, just barely. Other things were changing.”(10) and that “I woke up in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world”(11). Here Dillard discusses how she was waking up slowly but surely. She also talks about recognizing the things around her that the real word and its ideas. When she wakes up, she states that she “discovered herself and the world”(11). Here Dillard conveys a good message that while she is “waking up” she is

She says that “Here also I began to wake in earnest, and shed superstition, and plan my days” (66). Throughout An American Childhood Dillard often places books with the metaphor of either waking up or time. Here Dillard discusses that after she read her books, she was awakened and started to once again become more realistic and logical about what the world is really like and what it realistically has to offer veresus her old romantic childhood ways of thinking. Annie’s brain had been awakened by books, and that changed her childhood and life forever.
Dillard connects time and waking up in the quote that reads “Who turned on the lights? You did, by waking up”(150). Here Dillard is stating that when you woke up, you turned on the lights.This means when we wake up we awaken time, and this childhood cap that we have worn for so long is now gone, we are now involved in the world and its ideas. The transition here between her first analogy of waking up and this one are very different, the quote here is more imperative and pertinent whereas the first one is slyly placed into the beginning