Heaven And Earth In Jest By Annie Dillard Summary

Annie Dillard, in her excerpt, “Heaven and Earth in Jest”, supports that nature has an alluring quality but can also be quite morbid. Dillard explains how nature is beautiful but also scary. She supports this claim by using vivid imagery and extremely descriptive language, in order to portray that innocence can be removed by the most common things. Her purpose is to expose that the littlest thing can alter a person’s life.

In the first paragraph Dillard begins by using humor and actions to convey a sense of childlike innocence into her main character. This child has no worries and enjoys instilling “dire panic” into the frogs she finds milling about the island. Whenever the main character finds a frog still in a puddle the tone shifts to quiet and scientific. This tone shift is whenever the author stops talking about frogs in general and focuses in on one singular frog. She describes the frog as having “wide dull eyes” and “glistening skin”, then the frog begins to collapse “like

kicked tent”. Here the author begins to compare the events unfolding to common things ordinary people would recognize. This alerts the reader to the significance of the small frog. This is the focus of the rest of the essay.
Comparing how the frog looked to common objects allows the reader to make connections to the terrifying event unfolding before their eyes.

When Dillard said the frog “seemed to collapse” like a “deflating football” she is describing how the frog shriveled up when it was slowly dying. Dillard then explains exactly why the frog died, her diction when explaining the frogs death suggests a homicide but the details of her telling suggest that it is a common occurrence in nature. The innocent child that once walked along the island shore gawking over the “inelegant” frogs, has been transformed into a child with a new understanding for the abysmal circle of life. The main character is notably upset at the end of the essay, the lifeless frog corpse sunk to the bottom of the shallow puddle and she “couldn’t catch [her] breath”. The water bug that killed the frog did nothing wrong and was only following instinct, but still it left the girl altered and with a new understanding for life,

forever.
Using descriptive language and vivid imagery helps Annie Dillard support her claim that nature is beautiful yet unforgiving. She showed that the smallest things can change a person’s life in this essay. Dillard explains perfectly that not everything is what it seems and by comparing extraordinary events to normal objects helps to make sense of what is happening.