In their artful description of large flocks of birds, both John Audobon and Annie Dillard are able to utilize a variety of imagery, syntax, diction, and points of views to describe the birds and to convey their effects in a stylistic manner. However, despite their noted similarities, including that of their fiery passion for bird watching, there are many differences in their work that make their individual descriptions unique. Audobon is more concrete and scientific, listing distinct observations and conveying them in a simple and technical manner, while Dillard is more abstract and artistic, adding more literary techniques and providing “trance-like” descriptions. John Audobon’s description of the birds were shifted more towards the technical …show more content…
aspect by stating concrete observations, as noted when he first started his passage with, “In the autumn of 1813…” as well as when he viewed the birds passing by, “I observed the pigeons flying from north-east to south-west, in greater numbers than I thought I had ever seen them before.” From there, he made very discrete notes of the actions he took during his bird watching adventure, explaining that, “I began to mark with my pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed.” Audobon is able to incorporate a loose syntax style similar to that of a scientific journal or article. In addition, he was able to explicitly detail the bird flight patterns by stating, “Mounted perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column, and, when high, were seen wheeling and twisting within their continued lines, which then resembled the coils of a gigantic serpent.” Audobon related not only the visual beauty of the birds but also how he felt as he watched the magnificent creatures fly, by adding a spark of his own thoughts in, “I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions”. Throughout his descriptions, Audobon utilizes direct and scientific imagery and language to describe the beauty as he watched and studied the birds, and through his concrete and loose syntax style of writing, was able to describe the phenomenon he witnessed during his birdwatching trip. On the contrary, Annie Dillard takes a different approach when describing her birdwatching experience.
By utilizing vivid details and intense imagery, she allows the readers to feel her emotions and visualize the abstract imagery that she put forth when describing the birds. Throughout her passage, Dillard incorporates very adept literary techniques to create a trance-like feeling, such as when recounting the flight patterns of the birds with, “The flight extended like a fluttering banner, an unfurled oriflamme, in either direction as far as I could see.” As she continues, she immerses the readers with the actions of the birds, in such a manner that makes it seem as if she was a bird herself, flying majestically with the flock. She stated that “Each individual bird bobbed and knitted up and down in the flight at apparent random, for no known reason except that that’s how starlings fly, yet all remained perfectly spaced.” By stating that, “The flocks each tapered at either end from a round middle, like an eye”, Dillard is able to provide additional explicit imagery and details that give the readers emotional insight rather than mere facts of what happened. Furthermore, as she describes the sounds she hears with, “Over my head, I hear a sound of beaten air like a million shook rugs, a muffled whuff. Into the woods they sifted without shifting a twig, right through the crowns of trees, intricate and rushing, like wind”, she provides so much intricate detail in a way that the
readers could almost envision every flutter and vibration of the birds above. Lastly, Dillard ends with a rhetorical question, “Could tiny birds be sifting through me right now?” She doesn’t expect an answer but rather enjoys the moment and the magical encounters. Throughout her description, Annie Dillard was able to showcase her literary skills as an abstract writer. By including many rich descriptions and metaphors, she is able to convey so much of the emotion of her experience when watching the birds. Throughout their colorful descriptions of large flocks of birds, both John Audobon and Annie Dillard are able to incorporate an arsenal of imagery, syntax, diction, and points of views to describe their bird watching experience in a stylistic manner. However, despite their similarities, the two authors differ drastically in their styles of writing. Audobon is more concrete and scientific, listing distinct observations and conveying them in a simple and technical manner, while Dillard is more abstract and artistic, adding more literary techniques and providing “trance-like” descriptions. However, despite their differences in literary styles, one thing will never change, and that is their shared interest and love for birdwatching!
As a way to end his last stanza, the speaker creates an image that surpasses his experiences. When the flock rises, the speaker identifies it as a lady’s gray silk scarf, which the woman has at first chosen, then rejected. As the woman carelessly tosses the scarf toward the chair the casual billow fades from view, like the birds. The last image connects nature with a last object in the poet's
The diction surrounding this alteration enhances the change in attitude from self-loath to outer-disgust, such as in lines 8 through 13, which read, “The sky/ was dramatic with great straggling V’s/ of geese streaming south, mare’s tails above them./ Their trumpeting made us look up and around./ The course sloped into salt marshes,/ and this seemed to cause the abundance of birds.” No longer does he use nature as symbolism of himself; instead he spills blame upon it and deters it from himself. The diction in the lines detailing the new birds he witnesses places nature once more outside of his correlation, as lines 14 through 18 read, “As if out of the Bible/ or science fiction,/ a cloud appeared, a cloud of dots/ like iron filings, which a magnet/ underneath the paper
Another technique used by both poets to characterize their animals is imagery. In "Hawk Ro...
The birds show symbolism in more than one way throughout the text. As the soldiers are travelling from all over the world to fight for their countries in the war, the birds are similarly migrating for the change of seasons. The birds however, will all be returning, and many of the soldiers will never return home again. This is a very powerful message, which helps the reader to understand the loss and sorrow that is experienced through war.
The Awakening and “Mad Men” both utilize birds as symbols of freedom to contrast with the constrainment of Edna and Betty’s lives. The birds are initially caged, similar to how Edna and Betty were first kept under control as housewifes by their husbands, but when the doors to the bird cage were opened, the birds were able to fly free. When Edna and Betty had an opportunity for independence, they were unable to move on the ground. Birds in both the Awakening and “Mad Men” symbolize the freedom and independence Edna Pontellier and Betty Draper yearn for, yet are unable to attain which highlights the immobilization of women in society.
Both Virginia Woolf and Annie Dillard are extremely gifted writers. Virginia Woolf in 1942 wrote an essay called The Death of the Moth. Annie Dillard later on in 1976 wrote an essay that was similar in the name called The Death of a Moth and even had similar context. The two authors wrote powerful texts expressing their perspectives on the topic of life and death. They both had similar techniques but used them to develop completely different views. Each of the two authors incorporate in their text a unique way of adding their personal experience in their essay as they describe a specific occasion, time, and memory of their lives. Woolf’s personal experience begins with “it was a pleasant morning, mid-September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months” (Woolf, 1). Annie Dillard personal experience begins with “two summers ago, I was camping alone in the blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia” (Dillard, 1). Including personal experience allowed Virginia Woolf to give her own enjoyable, fulfilling and understandable perception of life and death. Likewise, Annie Dillard used the personal narrative to focus on life but specifically on the life of death. To explore the power of life and death Virginia Woolf uses literary tools such as metaphors and imagery, along with a specific style and structure of writing in a conversational way to create an emotional tone and connect with her reader the value of life, but ultimately accepting death through the relationship of a moth and a human. While Annie Dillard on the other hand uses the same exact literary tools along with a specific style and similar structure to create a completely different perspective on just death, expressing that death is how it comes. ...
The tile of the poem “Bird” is simple and leads the reader smoothly into the body of the poem, which is contained in a single stanza of twenty lines. Laux immediately begins to describe a red-breasted bird trying to break into her home. She writes, “She tests a low branch, violet blossoms/swaying beside her” and it is interesting to note that Laux refers to the bird as being female (Laux 212). This is the first clue that the bird is a symbol for someone, or a group of people (women). The use of a bird in poetry often signifies freedom, and Laux’s use of the female bird implies female freedom and independence. She follows with an interesting image of the bird’s “beak and breast/held back, claws raking at the pan” and this conjures a mental picture of a bird who is flying not head first into a window, but almost holding herself back even as she flies forward (Laux 212). This makes the bird seem stubborn, and follows with the theme of the independent female.
The image of the “detailed and lifelike painting of a smiling clown’s head, made out of vegetables” (Dillard) evokes an unforgettable haunting that would journey with Dillard and me wherever we go. Although Annie Dillard’s disarranged ramblings are mentioned here and there, she is always able to relate back to them with a connection. The jumbled ramblings illustrate that the human thought process is not always consistently straightforward and directly logical to one’s mind. While trying to grasp the workings of the total eclipse, she compared how it did not make sense to food; “given a flashlight, a grapefruit, two oranges, and fifteen years, we still could not figure out” (Dillard). Near the end, Dillard relates the smiling vegetable clown
“I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions..”, Audubon logs, corresponding to Dillard’s emotions as she watched the starlings fly over her “I stood with difficulty, bashed by the unexpectedness of this beauty and my spread lungs roared.” Audubon and Dillard both see the flying birds as beautiful and are fascinated by their flight pattern and how agile they are. However the feeling of awe is more personal to Dillard than to Audubon because she writes “My eyes pricked from the effort...could tiny birds be sifting through me right now...fleet?” Dillard connects these birds to herself contrary to Audubon who connects his flocks of pigeons to angles and lines, “...they darted forward in undulating and angular lines, descended and swept close over the earth with inconceivable velocity, mounted perpendicularly so...column, and when high...continued
Of course, with the mind of a skilled author, she is no wildlife expert like Audubon. Nonetheless, she was competent enough to capture “the flight [, that] extended like a fluttering banner, an unfurled oriflamme.” In other words, Dillard is able to observe the “starlings” by making simile comparisons. Of the innumerable similes that she included within her essay, Dillard is able to compare the starling's formation as “transparent and whirling, like smoke” and “like a loosened skein,” and also compare their speed “like wind,” in order to explain the numerous amount of starlings were at the scene at the moment. Ultimately, Dillard doesn’t make an attempt to truthfully collect information about the birds, rather, she is remains still and experiences the
In Sarah Orne Jewett’s A White Heron, Jewett uses the main character Sylvia’s innocent, and considerably naive, point of view to defend the intangible power of beauty against the young bird hunter, who symbolizes the abuse of power through the destruction of the beauty in nature.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness as I sat down on a green park bench. The sun began to come up, just barely visible beneath a layer of soft gray clouds. A duck slid off the bank to join his raft in the cool water, causing ripples to break through the smooth surface of Lake Wingra. Colorful leaves danced through gusts of morning air, which gently rustled the boughs of a tree to my right. The leaves softly rustled, accompanying the symphony of bird calls and crickets echoing across the lake. Occasionally a shiny black crow broke the cool silence with his ugly call, and twice a grand heron made his exalted, almost dinosaur-like screech as he soared across the morning sky. His gigantic wings flapped audibly through the clear air, seeming to create
In the essay, “Living Like Weasels” Annie Dillard achieved a tone of admiration, by using strong thoughts. For example, in the essay Annie states, “In winter the steers stand in the middle of Tinker Creek, merely dampening their hooves. They look like miracles, complete with miracle nonchalance.” This statement made by the Annie is portraying how she looks at these animals as if they’re beautiful miracles, she looks at them in admiration. Another example in this essay of the author showing admiration toward nature is presented in this statement where Annie is showing she was in total surprise,
In Dickinson’s Hope is a thing with feathers she describes the bird to be singing, or chirping, constantly but ever so sweetly. The bird is a metaphor for hope but how the bird is described
...riental rug covering the floor. “A little longer stay in sight.” Outside, he could see a small butterfly whose wings were the color of the sky. It perched onto a tree’s leaf, inching forward until it reached the edge. “Much converse do I find in Thee, historian of my infancy, float near me; do not yet depart.” The small insect fluttered, attempting to fly away but was unable to move its wings fast enough. “Dead times revive in thee: Thou bring’st gay creatures as thou art. A solemn image to my heart, my father’s family.” The butterfly, mustering all its strength, flapped its wings furiously. Before the creature could even leave its perch, a bird adorned with a yellow beak and a black crest flew into view. Louis eye’s never left the bird as it raced towards the butterfly before finally taking the tiny insect in between in its beak and flying back to its nest.