Total Eclipse

Annie Dillard has clearly spent time and effort learning how to paint pictures in people’s heads. The vivid words she chooses creates that mental picture that only veteran writers can achieve. The whole time she was describing how a total eclipse looks and feels I felt like I was there with her. Even though I have never seen what one looks like, I am confident that I could now explain one to a friend. I also appreciated that Dillard added details that weren’t always necessary but that brought a more real-life-feeling to the essay. Take for example when she was describing the clown. The clown had nothing to do with the essay about eclipses, but by Dillard adding that detail, I could tell she cared about her writing. She was so moved by her experience with the total eclipse that she wanted to share every little detail to make us feel like we were there with her. Dillard snuck some metaphors in her writing that made good connections to things I could relate to. “The high way threaded south into the valley...” was one line that certainly painted a clearer picture in my mind. I have driven through mountains with roads winding down them. The roads weave down the side of the mountains like a spider web.

One of the paragraphs that I was most impressed with was when Dillard described how her husband looked during the eclipse. Her vision of him being “light-years away” and stating that it felt like “we had all started down a chute of time” boggled my mind. It takes a creative mind to compare two completely different objects like an eclipse and a time chute.

I did have some troubles reading this blog. Dillard writes with such a unique style that sometimes her words lose me. There was one paragraph about mushrooms that I did not fully understand; however, it was just another one of those details that only added life to the story, so I was able to grasp the rest of the story.

Overall I enjoyed reading Dillard’s work. Her style of writing varies from my usual readings, and I enjoyed that. She took a very short event and made it into a short story. By adding details that accentuated the experience, Dillard kept readers entertained.  

Updike and Sontag

After reading Updike’s essay on the horrendous events of 9/11, I was left with sorrow I have not felt since the first time learning about these events. To hear him describe what it was like to be up close and personal when the planes hit and the towers fell was so real that I couldn’t fathom being there with them. Only the people at the scene know the true catastrophe that occurred. It is one thing to watch those events unfold on television, but one gets a completely different view when at the scene. Updike used such vivid phrases and words to paint an everlasting picture in my mind. The line that caught my attention the most was when Updike described the sights of the World Trade Centers, “It seemed, at that first glance, more curious than horrendous: smoke speckled with bits of paper curled into the cloudless sky, and strange inky rivulets ran down the giant structure’s vertically corrugated surface.” This line is riddled with descriptive words that only add to the jaw-dropping experience. I liked that Updike talked about how Americans have to pick up the pieces and move on from this tragedy. This was a positive note to end on, and it left me with a new sense of hope for our country.

When I finished reading Sontag’s essay I did not have the same feeling of sorrow and hope that I did after reading Updike’s. Sontag rattled about, “The public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality.” To me, this was not fair to families who lost loved ones on that tragic day. It would not be right to say that they did not take enough burden by only losing a member of their family. This declaration, paired with the statement that our democracy and public office say they can manipulate us, put a double bash on a country that already has its plate full. I think that America knows our government is not flawless, but now is not the time to try and perfect it. I hope no one who lost a loved one in these terrible events has to read this essay and feel even worse about how little they can do for our country. Even though I did not agree with the message Sontag was trying to send, I did admire her writing style. She fills sentences with rich word choice that add to the anger portrayed in this essay.