Annie Dillard

Character Analysis

People, Shmeople

Quick: Think about the most social girl you know. She never stops texting, she sends constant Facebook invites, and she can't eat lunch without Instagramming it. If you want to know the latest gossip, she's obviously the person you ask. You never see her anywhere without at least one friend on either side, and she's always falling asleep in class because she stayed up too late chatting online.

Now picture the exact opposite of that girl…and you have yourself a vision of Annie Dillard.

Dillard wants to pare down her life and expand her consciousness, and she don't need no stinkin' roommates. "Must I then part ways with the only world I know?" she asks. "I had thought to live by the side of the creek in order to shape my life to its free flow" (10.56). She's not afraid to be alone, and if she has to separate herself from humans to understand the human condition, so be it.

After a few months at Tinker Creek, however, she's seen so many bloodthirsty mantises that nature is beginning to seem like a nightmare. She tells us:

It looks for the moment as though I might have to reject the creek life unless I want to be utterly brutalized. Is human culture with its values my only real home after all? […]

Either this world, my mother, is a monster, or I myself am a freak. (10.56-57)

She's not a freak, of course. Well, maybe she is, but she's the good kind of freak—the kind who can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about saints and Eskimos, if you can get her off that log she sits on by herself all day, watching for muskrats.

Hey, Look Over There

When Dillard goes out into the woods to look at nature, she's not content to just look; she wants to really see. If there's one thing she's good at, it's obsessive examination. Here's how she describes herself and her mission:

I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell.

I am an explorer, then, and I am also a stalker, or the instrument of the hunt itself. (1.31-32)

Dillard's big on that bell thing. And how do bells work? They ring when they come in contact with something else—there is a dynamic exchange between the bell and whatever interacts with it. Dillard, then, is moved by nature as much as she moves it.

After finally seeing what she calls "the tree with lights in it," which is the moment the sun hits a tree in a certain way and illuminates the leaves, she says, "I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck" (2.38). Just looking at stuff isn't enough for Dillard—she wants it to look back. Seeing, for her, isn't just observation; it's conversation. Communion with nature or bust.

Are You There, God? It's Me, the Newt Whisperer

Besides seeing and coming unfixed—by which she means breaking out of your day-to-day routines and perceptions—Dillard's other big thing is God. You name a religious text, she's read it; you name an ancient Jewish ritual, she knows the name of the first rabbi to perform it. But she's not content to sit around reading books—nope, Dillard's come to Tinker Creek to see God for herself.

What she doesn't expect, though, when she sets out on her mission to be a bell and marvel at stuff, is that she'll have a crisis of faith. We're not talking about starting off a believer and becoming an atheist, however. Dillard continues to assume God's existence throughout, but thinks he might be more of an evil mad scientist than a beneficent granddad in a robe.

At one point she notes, "But some higher animals have emotions that we think are similar to ours: dogs, elephants, otters, and the sea mammals mourn their dead," she says, having no doubt read lots of books about it. "Why do that to an otter? What creator could be so cruel, not to kill otters, but to let them care?" (10.63) Indeed. What is God, anyway—some kind of meanie-pants otter-punisher? Sheesh. Fear not, though: Dillard's not going to stop considering this, and other questions like it, until she reaches some sort of resolution. It's just not her style.

Dancers Gotta Dance

After a hundred or so pages of existential angst, Annie comes to the conclusion that life can be ugly and beautiful at the same time. She says:

Israel's priests offered the wave breast and the heave shoulder together, freely, in full knowledge, for thanksgiving. They waved, they heaved, and neither gesture was whole without the other, and both meant a wide-eyed and keen-eyed thanks. (15.29)

In other words, duality is essential. Life requires death, and in this way, God and nature manifest both. And speaking of duality, here's the big life lesson Dillard's learned and wants to teach us: If you're smart and curious and have any sense of wonder at all, your brain and your spirit will join together to save you. In other words, we may lead lives that require death, but there is still plenty of hope for the living.