Meredith+on+Dillard

Here is what Meredith thinks about Dillard.

Dillard's Thesis: "Grasp your one necessity and don't let it go."

How the piece hangs together: 1.) Attention grabbing stories about a weasel's tenacity once it latches onto something (like the man's hand or the eagle's throat) serve to engage the reader using disbelief and awe. A weasel hung onto an eagle until only its skull remained?! I am now officially impressed and intrigued by weasels, which I definitely was not when I first sat down to read the piece.

2.) Now that she has the reader engaged, she inserts herself into the story: "I saw one last week." I kept reading here because now that I know about a weasels propensity for biting things and not letting go, I wanted to see what was going to happen to Dillard. Will the weasel latch onto her like it did to the man in the beginning?

3.) Her beautiful language carries us through the human meets weasel scene, which she uses to transition the story from one about weasels to one about humans. Her images here stunningly show the connection that she has in this moment with the weasel and nicely prepare the reader for her final portion. We need this to keep the idea of having a brain that thinks like a weasel's from sounding absurd.

4.) Finally, the moral of the story. We should be like weasels. We should find the thing that matters to us and hold on for dear life. She calls back the most memorable image (the eagle) from the beginning of her piece to drive home this point at the end: "Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even...as high as eagles"

Evan's Response:

1) I think this is also a great example of working research into a non-fiction piece. The information doesn't disturb the flow of the narration. It seems like somet hing she just //knows// about weasels.

2) I didn't catch this at first, but her insertion of herself into the story also feels very unobtrusive. She starts the piece off almost as a riddle: "A Weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks?" And then she suddenly introduces herself, as if she is intruding into the natural life of the weasel and not the other way around, which is probably how it felt to her.

3) I agree, she's doing something risky. It's easy for this whole "how are we like wild animals" bit to sound cliched and flakey. Comparing yourself to a wild animal is tired, but I think she pulls it off because she's so specific; she writes about the //brain// of a weasel.

4) It seems that she is also doing something that could fall victim to cliche here, but doesn't: ending the story with a clearly stated moral. But I think she does it right because she's specific. The scope of the story has suddenly blown up from something small, an encounter with a weasel, to something enormous, thoughts on death, life, and purity. What do you think she means when she says it would be "obedient" to "grasp your one necessity and not let it go." What does she mean by "necessity"?

Meredith Could obedience be a reference to fate? She talks about how her mind is clouded with biases and motives, and how she wants to clear out all of these and just live, pure-minded. Perhaps when she says it is obedient to grasp onto the one necessity and let it take you where it may, she means that by attaching yourself to this one necessity, without motive or bias, you allow //fate// to take you where it may. As for the one necessity, I read that as a passion at first. Let your passion for something, like your family, or writing, or whatever it may be, direct the course of your life. But that set of meanings felt too small for me; it didn't quite go with the grand language that she uses in the end. Then I thought of necessity as something bigger, like religion. The second time through, I read the last section as a religious piece. That latching on to the eagle is like devoting yourself to God (or the gods), and you allow God to take you where he wants you to go. Necessity is devotion to God? I feel as though there are lots of ways to read that end section--how did you read it?

Maybe! Obedience to a higher calling, like God? This is the only Dillard I've ever read, so I don't know how //spiritual// a writer she is. It's strange that she uses the word obedience, because the piece seems to be so much about authenticity, being faithful to the self. But obedience suggests being faithful to something outside the self. I didn't think of that. ..