The Upstream And Downstream Of Seeing By Annie Dillard

In "What Meets the Eye," by Daniel Akst, the author argues that looks in fact do matter, and he evaluates the fact that we all know that looks matter, even more than we think. He mentions that we try to deny that looks do not matter, but on the inside, we do know that looks matter and according to him, looks are very important.

Annie Dillard’s essay “Sight into Insight” emphasizes how specific moments in time can be interpreted differently, therefore; no two people will be able to compare perspectives on the same situation. Dillard starts her essay off by connecting to the reader through a story she tells “either when she was six or seven years old” (Dillard para.1). For fun Dillard would hide pennies in trees and make signs saying stuff like “SURPRISE AHEAD” or “MONEY THIS WAY” (para.1) to lure people into checking what was exactly inside the tree. The point of this was not to see what kind of people would actually take the time to look, but the mind-blowing thought of how “someone would receive a free gift from the universe”(para.1). Although it all depends on the

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard is about the beauty in life and when work becomes art. She talks about Dave Rahm, a fearless pilot and how he maneuvers his plane and the beauty in the moves he executes. Dillard first saw the pilot in an air show and she was enchanted by how the plane moved in the air, almost like music, and how that impacted her and the audience. She later flew with the same pilot, Dave Rahm, and experiences being inside the cockpit of the plane. Dillard uses a lot of details and metaphors that help the readers feel like they are experiencing what is happening themselves. The story she tells of Dave Rahm and his stunts makes the readers think about the beauty and passion in life and the when work becomes art to be seen and

“Seeing Ourselves” by Arthur Gottleib is an opened form poem that consists of four no rhyming quintains with the exception of the last stanza. The subject focuses on a complicated relationship between a man and a woman. In the poem, the speaker is a man who is having trouble with his love life. The theme of this poem is that one can only fight and battle so much for something they love before they meet the end and give up. The tone begins in frustration mixed with sadness, but in the end switches to hopelessness and gloom. At this point, the speaker has realized that he has been ‘fighting’ for a lost cause.

Updike continues his portrayal of the vast splendor of nature through metaphors, similes, and diction pertaining to a large flock of starlings that flew and over and lit on the gold course where the two men in the poem are playing. The approaching flock of birds seem like a “cloud of dots” (Line 16) on the horizon to observers. The author compares The image of the steadily approaching flock of starlings to iron filings (the birds) stuck to a magnet through a piece of paper (the horizon). The men stand in awe of the black, writhing, approaching mass, much like children do when the magnet picks up the filings through the paper. By comparing the approaching birds to the magnet and iron filing scenario in a simile, Updike subtly likens the men reaction to a small child’s reaction when he/she sees the “magic” of the magnet and the iron filings for the first time. The simile purpose is to show how nature can make grown men feel like small, free little kids when experiencing nature at its best. As the observers continue to watch the looming flock of birds, the flock became one huge pulsating mass of birds that seemed as “much as one thing as a rock.” (Line 22) Updike once again eloquently portrays nature as absolutely stunning to show how nature affects man. The birds descended in a huge “evenly tinted” (Line

In life, there are often many different ways to experience an event depending on a person’s background and field of study. Regarding these two passages, John Audubon, a scientist, and Annie Dillard, an artisan, describe a murmuration of starlings based on their experiences. The use of their craft in the description of this phenomenon is shown through their styles of writing. While both authors use descriptive language, Audubon utilizes an exact and scientific style while Dillard utilizes a reflective and poetic style.

The use of imagery builds the story and expresses how important Dillard's childhood was in shaping the women she has become today . The excerpt begins with a reflection upon her childhood and growing up a tomboy. Dillard set the stage for “the chase” by explaining the day as “cloudy but cold” (5) with cars lining the snow covered street. Imagery is used not only to set the stage for the day of “the chase” but it is also used to describe the man chasing them as a city man dressed in “a suit and tie, street shoes” (10). Using imagery to describe the man’s appearance helps the reader to understand how unusual the man's appearance was and that the man was chasing them through the city. Dillard builds the suspense of “the chase” by taking the reader through the motions, past a “...yellow house...under a low tree, up a bank, through a hedge…” (12), she builds an image in our minds of the neighborhood. The imagery is used to build up the scene, convey suspense and create emotions for the reader.

It is easy to judge individuals based on our crooked misconceptions. Sight is a useless physiological sense if one is unable to view/perceive things on a deep, meaningful level. Due to this, individuals tend to allow other relationships to trigger personal insecurities within. One must be capable to share a vision with others to achieve enlightenment and self-awareness. In “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the author utilizes various rhetorical devices to convey the importance of perception and sight.

The novel “Tangerine”, written by Edward Bloor, is a realistic-fiction novel that focuses on the motif of sight, and how what’s on the surface isn’t the same as what’s beneath. The motif of sight plays the part of showing that just because someone has glasses doesn’t mean that they can’t see, but they can sometimes see better than other people. Through the motif of sight, Paul, the main character, has a growing understanding of his friends, his family, and himself.

Dillard never fully states how or why she has decided to adopt this quality she learned from an animal, but instead discusses the topic more broadly in order for the idea to have more expansive applications. When discussing purity, necessity, and persistency, Dillard states, “I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.” Not defining her necessity in life or the necessity she believes we should grasp tightly to, directly contributes to the intricacy of this essay. This statement could make her audience think, “How could I relate this to my life?” One could relate this idea to relationships in general, spiritual relationships, or relationships with themselves. The possibilities are endless. Dillard has used her personal experiences to communicate a compelling message of “living as we should”. In some ways, David Searcy also uses these methods to indirectly portray these thoughts of “living in the moment” in his essay “The Hudson River School.” Uncovering the title of Searcy’s essay is substantial in order to find meaning. The Hudson River School was a mid-nineteenth century American art movement by landscape painters whose aesthetic views were influenced by romanticism. A story about the death of a bothersome coyote prevails, but the same idea of connection to the world—rather than our

1) According to Dillard, lovers and the knowledgeable can see well. Yet she also suggests that those who are knowledgeable on a topic, such as people who have been blind from birth and can suddenly see (due to an opperation), can perhaps view more objectively the world around them, and see it in a way that those with vision from birth cannot. Infants, she says, can see very clearly, for they are viewing the world for the first time, and can observe the colors and the light with no prejudgments, but we forget this experience as we grow older, and only occasionally catch glimpses of this phenomenon.

Albert Einstein once said, “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” In “The Open Boat,” four young men battle the nature of the sea. Fighting for their lives, they lose sight of the beauty of nature. In “To Build a Fire,” a man and his dog are traveling through the Yukon.

In this essay, I will be comparing these two poems; "I, Too" by Langston Hughes, and "Fireflies in the Garden" by Robert Frost. In each of these poems are many different poetic devices used, some of which, I will be comparing between the two. The poetic device: metaphor, is a commonly used device, which is used in the following poems, and as well as metaphor, I will be discussing the poems' differences and similarities for the uses of imagery and symbolism.

This goes along with her motif about nature and how remarkable it is. She provides us with a quote from Einstein which states, "nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur, not by her cunning" (9). Dillard, by using this quote, takes an abstract thought and creates this image in our heads. She points out how impressive nature is thus nudging her readers to think about nature in its entirety while picturing what she believes to be impressive. "Nature is like one of those line drawings of a tree that are puzzles for children," she also states, "Unfortunately nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair" (18-19). She is able to capture these images by comparing nature to a drawing of a tree. She makes her readers aware that if you do not stop and analyze it carefully and thoroughly in the present, making sure you are seeing it for what it truly is, it will quickly pass by and you will miss it. She takes this abstract thought about nature and proceeds to say, "If we were to judge nature by its coming sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature improbabilities are the one stock in trade" (146). Dillard expresses her own ideas about nature and claims that if society judges nature, we would not believe that it was real. She is trying to make the point that individuals need to stop looking to nature to get answers about the

However, this process is wholly contingent upon one’s willingness and capacity to lay oneself open to nature and connect with it in such a way that one sees beyond nature to the Spirit. Emerson’s use of the eyeball metaphor perfectly illustrates the moment of access to this realm: “I become a transparent eye-ball: I am nothing: I see all: the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me: I am part or particle of God” (2). Attaining such a state is the only way that Emerson sees humanity as being able to “enjoy an original relation to the universe” (1) but this not a simple task. “In this kind of visual relationship between the eye and the world, the eye stands completely passive and unselective while the surrounding world flows unbroken into it” (Tanner 313). This passivity is unattainable so long as we allow culture to exert its influence on our consciousness because, for Emerson, the institutions of culture – poetry, physical and intellectual science, and religion (15) – all question the reality of nature as a result of, what Emerson terms, their Idealism which is the practice of subordinating nature to ideas. Essential to Emerson’s theory of nature is that “Any distrust of the permanence of laws would paralyze the faculties of man” (12). To cast doubt on the validity of nature, the very basis of language, morals and beauty, is to cut off any avenue to a holistic understanding of nature.