Roberts 1 Seth Roberts English 1010-119 Irene Peterson April 4, 2014 Seeing unraveled Born in 1945, Annie Dillard

has become known for her colorfully specific details of nature, describing the world around her as a beauty that often goes overlooked. In 1974, Dillard won a Pulitzer Prize for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. In Seeing,(Pg. 32-43) from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Dillard uses her spectral detail to bring the reader into the eyes of the newly sighted; while taking the reader on a journey through the world in her eyes. Noting that she tries to keep her eyes open, prizing the fleeting moments when the world is unraveled from reason. Dillard opened her essay by appealing to Ethos, using a story from her childhood about how she would hide a penny along a stretch of sidewalk, finding that she was excited at the thought of the next lucky passerby who would receive this free gift from the universe. Dillard uses this anecdote to also appeal to Logos explaining that the simplest things can bring a lifetime of happiness. If finding a penny can make the day, any such simplicity in any day will bring a lifetime of such days. Life is what is made of it. Appealing to Pathos, Dillard used a story about the summer evening that she had stayed too late at Tinker Creek. Dillard engages the readers mind with the sensations of the dark, depicting uncertain sounds while using colorful imagery to depict the reflection of what little light there was in the sky reflecting down upon her and the creek beside. Dillard wonders about how much she is missing and brings note to the fact that the bio-network to the brain cuts and splices the electrical information, editing it for the brain. As Donald E. Carr points out, This is

Roberts 2 philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.(Pg.35) Dillard refers to a book she had chanced upon called Space and Sight, by Marius Von Senden. Dillard writes of how upon undergoing cataract operations patients were tested on their sense of depth perception and ideas of space, the results seemed to imply that the blind have no perception of depth confusing it with roundness. Objects familiar to the touch have no context to the view of the newly sighted. As Dillard writes, for the newly sighted vision is pure sensation unencumbered by meaning. Going on to write of a newly sighted girl who upon seeing photographs and paintings asked, Why do they put those dark marks all over them? Those arent dark marks, her mother explained, Those are shadows. That is one of the ways the eye knows things have shape. If it were not for shadows, many things would look flat. Well, thats how things do look, Joan answered. Everything looks flat with dark patches. Dillard goes on to explain that the newly sighted see the world as a dazzle of colorpatches pointing out that that individuals sees in color patches as infants, saying that the color patches of infancy are lost. Being that as infants grow familiar with the sensations of sight and associate meanings to what is seen the true images pass by being interpreted by what visual meanings catch he focal attention. She goes on to explains, Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply wont see it. And it is in this way that form is condemned to an eternal danse macabre [dance of death] with meaning. In Dillards eyes there are two ways of seeing, one way is to analyze and pry, scout out for things. The other comes by allowing the mind to sway transfixed and emptied. Dillard compares these two ways of seeing with the analogy that seeing as an analyst, scouting and

Roberts 3 prying, is like looking through a camera shot by shot reading the light as it is calibrated. While seeing transfixed and emptied is like seeing with ones own shutters, allowing light to imprint on ones own view. In this way Dillard says, I am above all an unscrupulous observer. Dillard closed the essay talking about her experience with trying to see the tree full of lights, explaining that one cannot simply set out to see the color patches of the world; it takes a lifetime of discipline to hush the commentator of the mind. She goes on saying, The minds muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness. Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of the consciousness; you raise your sights; look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond. She finishes by expressing that, The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam. Annie Dillard is a talented writer that makes great use of vivid imagery and elaborate detail. She engages the reader through pathos with tantalizing detail, while still appealing to Logos with her logical concepts, by using herself as the Ethos she gives great credibility to the story, as it is something she has experienced, being expressed through her eyes. Annie Dillards writings teach us to slow down and appreciate nature for what it is, not just the meanings given by the reader.

Roberts 4 Work Cited Dillard Annie. Seeing Readings for Writers: Bedford/St. Martins. 2013. Print. April 4. 2014.