Annie Dillard's Living Like Weasels essay

Annie Dillard's

"Living like Weasels"

(Nature & Wildness reexamined)

There is more to what we call wild nature than meets the eye and in this story of an ever so brief encounter with a different form of life, the author is transported to consider the role of predation and survival, struggle and surrender in the way we and other creatures conduct their lives. Once sure in her confidence of what it means to human the encounter redefines her values and her comprehension of what a human being ought to be.

Mountain marmot, Hurricane Ridge, Olympic Range, Washington.

1. Together answer: "How is the Dillard essay constructed?" describe its parts.

Walker, pp. 63-68.

17 paragraphs ( ¶ ) in five acts (parts):

¶ | Characteristic features explanation of meaning

1-2 Premonition: Wild, ETS story, talons, bones and death in life in death.

p. 63.

3-7 Setting -- time and place. Hollins/Murray's Pond ( Walden ) sunset in suburbia!

p. 63-64.

8-11 THE ENCOUNTER; a shocking, world changing - view & an upsetting event!

p. 64-65.

12-14 Reflection on the loss and what this means; thoughtful people are not so free.

p. 65.

15-17 The lesson: didactic quality, meaning or lesson of this story: she tells you how to live!

pp. 65-66.

structure | conclusions | return to start

Her conclusive remarks

¶ 15 symbiosis two minds become one as open as the land is to snow!
¶ 16 freedom of necessity (not as customarily thought -- of will to choose)
¶ 17 life advice on how to live "grasp your one necessity"

2. What uses does this author make of "premonition?"

That is how does she utilize imagery to foreshadow some later reuse of images or phrases to tell a story or deepen her initial memory of this experience?

seize grip wild rose stunned stillness bondage vs. necessity

3. What happens?

She goes for a walk
In walking she meets her equal, in a weasel (lowly rodent)! IRONY

4. Characteristics are: weasels are: wild predatory hunters

startled easily tenacious stalkers
living in their "physical senses" determined
persistent free perseverance

We should be as "proper, obedient & pure" & "not let go" survivors of even death

¶14 noticing everything, remembering nothing
¶15 Down is a good place to go
Could two live under the wild rose
¶16 "perfect freedom of single necessity

5. Answer her question in ¶ #15; "Could two live that way?"

No this is absurd, even irritating, to think we can give up our mental faculties!
perhaps this is the unity nature requires and to which we may strive but never reach
Yes as partners or the child at the breast of the mother, friends & stalkers, real lovers

6. What does Dillard mean by equating freedom & necessity in

¶#16

she reverses (irony) our usual notion of freedom to choose
free is equated -- instead -- with instinctually free
humans are slaves to ideas, the mind, the ideology of the group, fads
wild animals are free even from death because they are true -- tenacious

7. The point is: marriage of necessity
we need to treat nature as a partner, participant and even lover

"This is yielding, not fighting" (¶16)
Learn how to live! "Then even death.... can not you part." (¶14-17)

structure | conclusions | return to start