Though most people don’t have this advantage, Annie Dillard uses her skills as a reader to improve her writing in the moth essay from her book “Holy The Firm”. Dillard uses comparison and several other modes of writing to convey and support the main point and purpose of her essay; some of the other modes Dillard uses are: narration, description, argument, and process analysis. Dillard uses narrative writing throughout most of her moth essay.
Narrative writing tells a story. “In a narrative events must be told or shown in some orderly sequence (the plot), by a particular person (the narrator), from a particular perspective (the point of view), and within a definite time and place (the setting)” (Cooley 123).
Dillard uses narrative writing successfully throughout her essay. One example of Dillard’s use of narrative comes from the middle of her moth essay. A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspan, flapped into the fire, dropped her abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, frazzled and fried in a second.
Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper, enlarging the circle of light in the clearing and creating out of the darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater, the green leaves of jewel-weed by my side, the ragged red trunk of a pine. At once the light contracted again and the moth’s wings vanished in a fine, foul smoke. (Dillard 6).
The Homework on Writing And Narrative
“The term literacy event gives us a way to think about how reading and writing enter our lives and shape our interactions with others” (Trimbur 29). Purpose: The purpose of a literacy narrative is to look at a time in your life when reading and/or writing had a significant effect for you and then to analyze this effect in writing. Refer to chapter 15 in The Norton Field Guide for memoir tips. ...
Dillard demonstrates use of narrative in this paragraph by providing a plot, a moth flying into a candle and lighting up the clearing.
Dillard (the narrator) writes from her perspective (the point of view) and tells us that the setting is in a clearing at night. The above paragraph is also an example of objective description and process analysis. When you describe something objectively, you describe it based on facts such as ‘a two-inch wingspan’ . When you describe something subjectively you describe it based on your own opinions and biases. Dillard goes on to describe the burning of the moth as “a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like any immolating monk” (6).
Dillard also states, “She burned for two hours without changing, without bending or leaning – only glowing within, like a building fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls, like a hollow saint, like a flame faced virgin gone to God” (6).
In her writing Dillard uses subjective description to draw comparison between the moth and the nature of writing. In comparing the burning moth to a monk, Dillard shows that she believes writing requires dedication. The moth being devoured by the flame shows Dillard’s belief that writing also requires sacrifice.
Dillard supports her main point with an example from her own life. In the beginning of the moth essay Dillard talks about camping in the Blue-Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Dillard goes camping with the sole purpose of re-reading the book that inspired her to be a writer when she was sixteen. Therefore, Dillard sacrificed the comfort of modern convenience in order to dedicate herself to finding her passion for writing again. Dillard also shows the sacrifice of a writer through comparison in this quote: “Had she been new, or old?
Had she mated and laid her eggs, had she done her work? All that was left was the glowing horn shell of her abdomen and thorax – a fraying, partially collapsed gold tube jammed upright in the candle’s round pool” (6).
In comparing the moth to the writer, Dillard suggests that writers sacrifice so much of themselves to their writing. Despite all their sacrifices, all that’s left of most writers is a tattered book on a shelf somewhere. Dillard used narration, description, comparison, and process analysis to show the main point of her essay.
The Essay on Annie Dillard Nature Writer
Annie Dillard's view of nature is simply stated in 'Teaching a Stone to Talk': "We are here to witness." (90) We are not here to analyze, conquer, tame or understand and she does not use any of these themes in her writing like so many other nature writers. In 'Very Like a Whale', Robert Finch is obsessed with the question of why so many people came to observe the whale, and in analyzing this ...
Near the end of her moth essay, Dillard uses a logical argument to show the purpose for her essay. “And that is why I believe those hollow crisps on the bathroom floor are moths. I think I know moths, and fragments of moths and chips and tatters of utterly empty moths, in any state. How many of you, I asked the people in my class, which of you want to give your lives and be writers? ” (6).
Dillard continues with, “And then I tried to tell them what the choice must mean: you can’t be anything else. You must go at your life with a broad-ax. These quotes emphasize Dillard’s earlier statements, that to be a writer requires dedication and sacrifice. These quotes also show Dillard’s purpose for writing this essay, to inspire others to dedicate themselves to being writers as well.
