Living Like Weasels Dillard Summary

In "Living like Weasels", author Annie Dillard uses rhetorical devices to convey that life would be better lived solely in a physical capacity, governed by "necessity", executed by instinct. Through Dillard's use of descriptive imagery, indulging her audience, radical comparisons of nature and civilization and anecdotal evidence, this concept is ultimately conveyed.

Annie Dillard’s essay “Living Like Weasels” exhibits the mindless, unbiased, and instinctive ways she proposes humans should live by observing a weasel at a nearby pond close to her home. Dillard encounters about a sixty second gaze with a weasel she seems to entirely connect with. In turn, this preludes a rapid sequence of questions and propositions about “living as we should”. Unfortunately, we tend to consume our self with our surroundings and distractions in life, which is not a problem until we are blatantly told. How have we strayed so far from our once instinctive lifestyle?

Through proving that we are not always correct, and reminding the audience that different people can have different views of reality, Wallace is able to use logical reasoning to show that humans have the ability to change their perspectives.

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 of the weasel’s emotions and its actions. Concerning her ethos, Dillard presents herself as a part of suburbia and then is suddenly, inexplicably overcome by the desire to live wild. Dillard also uses very detailed language throughout the essay in describing her surroundings and thoughts, however; this further undermines her argument and ethos as she is trying to convince the reader that she could simply become as simple and single minded as the weasel she has focused her argument around. With her use of pathos, Dillard begins her essay with descriptions of the weasel’s brutality, yet; she concludes by stating the weasel lives as is necessary. By simplifying her experience and presenting a reasonable explanation for why she wanted to

In “Living Like Weasels,” Annie Dillard recalls an encounter with a weasel and connects the weasel’s tenacity to the human pursuit of one’s calling. In a forest, Dillard describes the encounter with the weasel when they lock eyes; she then explains what is inside of the weasel’s brain, his habits and traits. (MS7) She explains that a weasel’s living is one desire: instinct, a weasel’s tenacity to lock onto its prey and to not let go. Dillard then compares the weasel’s tenacity with the human calling; humans urge to understand their calling and refuse to quit until they have achieved their goal. Additionally, Dillard offers an exhortation to live in obedience to that calling. (MS6) As well as obedience, instinct requires the human capacity for reason.

I would like to live in a civilization where the human’s only option is to reach beyond what is to be expected, living a life that is easiest for them. If we were all to live like the weasel does, where their mind set is to be wild it will benefit us in the long run. In “Living Like Weasels,” Annie Dillard interprets that being wild is to be free: to go after your calling, focused on the need to succeed. She also suggests that mindlessness, is not allowing anything to get in the way of your one true goal, where chasing after your dream is your only option, the only means to your own

In the essay “Living like Weasels” the author analogizes the rugged lifestyle that is a weasels’ to that of a complex humans’. He jumpstarts his writing by repeating the masculine pronouns, “he” and “his” numerously to describe this four legged mammal. Later encroaching on almost alarming territory filling his audience in on two grotesque stories exemplifying a weasels savage behavior. After an encounter with a weasel in its natural wooded habitat the author begins to trail about how this wild animal was able to get inside his head and inhabit it for quite a long amount of time. The author explains this exhilarating vividly as, “a certain beating of the brains with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons.” Should the audience be

Wallace establishes a humorous tone in the first section to convey his argument. “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys, how's the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’” (233) This anecdote introduces the fact the many people don’t understand what is going on around them and why Wallace believes it is important to be conscious of what is happening around you. “This is not a matter of virtue- it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.” (233) Wallace argues that it is hard to get into a state of awareness because humans have their “hard-wired default-setting”. People need to get out of their own self-centered habits and see things in a different point of view. By using a humorous tone, Wallace can effectively get people on his side of the argument.

In the excerpt, Death of a Moth, by Annie Dillard, she attempts to overcome her writer's block by getting away from it all and taking a trip into the Mountains of Virginia. While taking time off, she intends to spiritually find her true self again and get back on a successful track. Only by using concrete imagery, drawing a strong parallel, and meticulously selecting a certain word choice to create points of clarity, is she able to effectively convey her inner struggle.

Secondly, Dillard’s work “living like weasels” effectively projects her perspective through the use of her radical comparisons. Throughout the essay, Dillard’s use of comparisons often helped familiarize her audience in connecting complex and abstract concepts together into concrete context. This is first seen as she states “His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood and bone: uncollected, unconnected, loose-leaf, and blown.” Through this, Dillard connects a concept most would be familiar with: writing journals, to describe what goes on in a weasel’s mindset. In addition, she illustrates that not only do weasels act out of survival, but simply that their “journal” is a transcript of their physical actions. Dissimilar to humans, weasels do not render their thoughts nor “write in journals”, but rather react out of instinct. It is often seen through the content of the piece that she also enjoys to contrast and compare through the occurrences of juxtaposition. This can be seen in the phrases such as, “Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut”. Through these lines, the ideas of man vs nature are continuously

When you start to second look the things you first viewed as ugly and out of your life's story context, you start to see new things. To see using the eyes of faith breeds new perspectives.

I feel like that’s what the author is trying to get us to understand she might not be using the ability to use your nose as an example, but we get the gist. Some people might agree that understanding something completely will help you enjoy everything a lot more, and some might say looking into certain situations too deep can keep you from enjoying things in life. There’s more to life than feeling either happy or sad, Dillard feels that in order to enjoy life you need to experience every single emotion there is, which I agree with. How you perceive everything you come across in life, is how you’re going experience it, you step out of your comfort zone to get the full experience of everything you do, remember life is also all about trial and error. And you can apply this to everything you come across in life, this might sound super corny but, honestly life is what you make it. You shouldn’t let anyone else’s actions interfere with how you see or feel things, because at the end of the day it doesn’t affect anyone but

“…avoiding the two extremes…opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which leads to peace of mind, to the higher wisdom, to full enlightenment…” (EWC p. 157).

With the purpose of man comes the power in which their views become a blind tool in regards to people’s beliefs. That by acting towards these godlike qualities is only a mirror representation to justify themselves. It’s almost as though, “One man’s life or death [is only] a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which [people] sought, for the dominion [they] should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of [their] race” (Shelley, 23). Yet, this knowledge is never fully acquired due to the fact that they let their beliefs toward reasoning prevent them from bettering themselves and others. It’s almost as though the idea of this god-like perfection tears their existence to obliteration. One cannot be themselves truly if they are doing everything possible to change who they are. “One can’t live with one’s finger everlastingly on one’s pulse. [they] had often ‘a little fever,’ or a little touch of other things— the playful paw-strokes of the wilderness, the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught which came in due course” (Conrad, 99). If people are constantly focused on their set ideas and beliefs it prevents them from actually growing and having greater connections with the world. There is no actually purpose to be strong headed about everything, and can lead one to madness or

One hundred and twenty one years before Anthony Doerr published All the Light We Cannot See, Oscar Wilde wrote, “There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.” This sentiment could be a summary of All The Light We Cannot See. It could easily be translated into the words repeatedly uttered in Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel: “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.” To open the eyes is to live fully. To leave them closed is to live that shallow, degrading existence the world demands and often rewards. The world is not just. When the choice that is right contradicts the world’s desires, to live fully is to live a life of risk. Anthony Doerr’s characterization of Werner illustrates this divide between the right choice and the easy choice, and how when it matters most, they rarely overlap.