Annie Dillard's Essay 'Living Like Weasels'

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In Annie Dillard’s essay, Living Like Weasels, the author talks about the first time she encountered a weasel and the lesson in life she took out of this encounter. The essay begins by giving a description of weasels including a physical description and a story of how an individual called Ernest Thompson shot an eagle and found the skull of a weasel hanging on to its throat which symbolized how the weasel died protecting one necessity which is its life. Dillard then moves on to the encounter where she is sitting on a tree trunk near Hollins Pond and a weasel appears from a wild rose bush and shows itself in front of her. The two locked in eyes and as Miss Dillard states “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,” and the weasel disappeared following its instincts to run from danger. Dillard moves on to describe …show more content…

People spend so much time worrying about what is happening next that they forget to live in the present and enjoy life. She is saying that people should live simply and based off of instinct like animals do. People work all of the time and are constantly going and they never take time to stop. By living simply people are given the opportunity to enjoy the life and are only required to obtain the basic necessities of survival and in doing so life becomes much more calm and relaxing. She shows this when she writes, “We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience--even of silence--by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single

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