Many authors employ various stylistic elements, including language, narrative structure, tone, imagery, dialogue, and characterization, to craft compelling memoirs. Authors such as George Orwell, Frank McCourt, and Annie Dillard use these elements in their own style to reach the reader. Style is an author’s use of syntax and other literary devices to convey their voice to the reader. Each author uses style in their own way to create a clear message to the reader while also creating a unique and interesting story. Annie Dillard uses style to create a vivid and detailed setting in her memoir An American Childhood. Annie Dillard uses her style creatively along with imagery to allow the reader to picture the scene and setting vividly. Authors such …show more content…
It interested me especially for the totemic brown water stain on a sloping plaster wall. The stain looked like a square-rigged ship heaved over in a storm. I have been looking at this ship for many months. It was a painting, not a drawing; it had no lines, only forms awash, which rose faintly from the plaster and deepened slowly and dramatically as I watched the seas climb and the wind ride before anyone could furl the sails.”(Dillard, 126) Annie Dillard invites the reader on a walk up to her attic. The reader is vividly brought up with Dillard and almost feels as if they are in the attic looking at the stain. Dillard turns a water stain into an entire scene. Making the stain turn into a ship at sea with a crew and waves crashing into the ship. The way that Dillard turns a simple and mundane stain into an intense scene in the reader's mind is amazing. Dillard’s use of imagery and description almost guides the reader’s imagination to create a vivid and detailed …show more content…
What is the 'Standard' of the 'Standard'? What’s up, son,? Eugene went on crying and when Dad leaped from the bed and turned on the gaslight we saw the fleas, leaping, jumping, fastened to our flesh. We slapped at them and slapped, but they hopped from body to body, hopping, biting. We jumped from the bed, the twins crying, Mam moaning, Oh, Jesus, will we have no rest! ” (McCourt, 1) McCourt describes a night that his whole family had to sleep in the same bed in a small room. McCourt describes the room and uses imagery to describe how small the room actually is. As the reader, you almost feel cramped in with the family. McCourt then describes how there were fleas that caused everyone to jump up and McCourt’s style makes the reader feel as though they are in that bed amidst all the chaos. McCourt describes how everyone jumped up and the kids were crying and everyone was slapping themselves and freaking out. McCourt uses imagery to allow the reader to feel involved and almost a part of the family, as if they were there. Frank McCourt is able to use style and different literary devices to make the reader feel as if they were a part of the story. The reader is almost forced to become a part of McCourt’s
without recognition. The most powerful are made with excitement. Annie Dillard clearly portrays this idea in “The Chase,” a chapter in her autobiography. She tells the story of her rebellious childhood and one of the most heart-pumping events of her life - a redheaded man giving her a chase. With this, she demonstrates the need for excitement, fearlessness, and recklessness in one’s childhood. In order to convey this idea, Dillard not only employs fierce and vivid description, but she impassionedly
Annie Dillard is a writer born in 1945 who has written 15 books and multiples poems and essays. From 1976 to 1979, she lived in Puget Sound before returning to the East Coast. Dillard also taught for 21 years in the English Department of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Her most notable work is “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” which won a Pulitzer Prize. “Transfiguration,” the other title for “Death of a Moth,” appeared in her book “Holy the Firm” but was originally published in 1976 in
Terwilliger Bunts One by Annie Dillard “Terwilliger Bunts One” by Annie Dillard is an amusing, revealing essay in which the speaker, a woman in her twenties or thirties, tells the audience stories about her mother and her mother’s unusual personality. The ultimate purpose of the essay is to show by the mother’s various quirks and rules how her daughter is inspired to be her own person, stand up for the underdog, and to keep people on their toes, and to hopefully pass this lesson on to the audience
Anne Dillard “An American Childhood” 1. Summarize what happens in the story. In the beginning of Annie Dillard’s story, “An American Childhood,” she describes playing football and how she and her friend Mickey were chased after throwing snowballs at a man’s car. The author compares the chase scene and the description of football to convey that in both it is “all or nothing”. 2. Give two writing strategies the author uses. (Dialogue? Detailing? Dramatic Arc?) Dillard uses dramatic arc and dialogue
Annie Dillard and Luis J. Rodriguez are two award-winning American writers. Although Ms. Dillard—Pulitzer prize winner— writes in the female perspective and Mr. Rodriguez in the male point of view, both display a similarity about a childhood event that happened to both of them. Even though the grew up in America, each has a unique style which gives us, the readers, a glimpse of their environment, along with its color, sound and culture. Each wrote about an event that occurred in their childhood
left unfound. In the writing piece, Seeing, Annie Dillard speaks of nature and the small things that we all are unconsciously blind to and not appreciative of. Seeing explores the idea of what it means to truly see things in this world. Annie Dillard’s main point is that we should view the world with less of a meddling eye, so that we are able to capture things that would otherwise go unnoticed. There’s a science to how we view things in nature. Dillard attempts to persuade her reader to adopt to
Annie Dillard, a Pulitzer Prize winner and writer, says, “If he noticed how he felt, he could not have done the work” (Dillard). She is referring to Dave Rahm, a stunt pilot who seemed to love his work. After Annie had took a flight with him, she had realized that he was not as passionate about being a stunt pilot as everyone thought. Many people can be fond
Throughout Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the author uses a number of techniques and devices to create images of particular landscapes that are both vivid and unique. Dillard’s language in descriptions of the landscape suggests space and shape, assigns color and likeness, and at times, implies motion and vitality. One particularly striking example of Dillard’s crafting the landscape occurs when she famously “pat[s] the puppy” (79) and becomes completely aware of her present sensory experiences
Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth” and Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels” both use animals as a symbol of life to share their viewpoint of life, Woolf uses sad and sympathetic tone and usual description of a typical autumn morning and Dillard uses cheerful and positive tone and almost dreamlike description of a beautiful summer evening to convey that people should live their lives the way they choose, since death is inevitable anyway. Both authors, Woolf and Dillard, choose animals in their essays as
American Childhood" by Annie Dillard is a good example of how a family member has influence on the children. This essay expresses her idea about her mother when the author looks back at her young age. Children will copy his or her character from the nearest person around them and develop this process until they mature. Family members would be the biggest influence to young children. A young girl imitates her mother and a young boy imitates his father, respectively. From the essay, Dillard said a lot about
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, written by Annie Dillard, is a novel based on the writers curiousness about the mystery of God and the world which surrounds her. She is truly baffled by the thought of God and the way his world seems to be evolving. Dillards novel encompasses two main themes. Her first theme is actually a brilliant question; Dillard wonders how there can be a loving and caring God when he has created such a brutal environment. Her second
Annie Dillard’s essay, “Living Like Weasels”, show how her first encounter with this odd creature gave her new philosophical insight into human nature. Dillard feels connected to this creature which lead her to believe that we should become more like a weasel. So, should we live like weasels? Yes, we, as humanity, should bring back more of our natural instinct and possess a strong sense of necessity, both qualities that a weasel has. For if a weasels is one thing, it is persistent, and that is a
anything; we just rehearse what we’ve been told is there” (Rosenwasser 4). In the anecdotal piece “Terwilliger Bunts One”, Annie Dillard has expressed her feelings and emotions towards her mother. Writing from the first person point of view, Annie Dillard also explains to her audience the attitude her mother took through many different circumstances and anecdotes that Dillard revealed thus admiring the personality of her mother as a child. By mentioning the qualities that her mother possesses, she
Although the majority had an enjoyable and carefree childhood, there are still many that do not have the chance to enjoy it. Just as a coin has two faces, Annie Dillard’s “An American Childhood” and Luis Rodriguez’s “Always Running” have shown the readers that not everyone had a fun and exciting childhood. In “An American Childhood”, Annie Dillard was a child. As she described within her writing, she used to hang out with the boys more than the girls in her neighborhood. She and her friends would throw
In Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, there are fifteen individual chapters that talk about different topics. Dillard is not a curious natural observer, but an ecological hunter who connects philosophy and nature. She walks into nature, senses the wind and the ground, and communicates with plants and animals, like she is a part of nature. She feels that by viewing natural landscapes in Tinker Creek, then humans’ metal state can be purified by experiencing these views, because humans are complicated