Dillard living like weasels Essay

This essay was originally written in February of 1996 for a composition class that I took at a local community college while completing my third and final year of high school. The original text has been edited to correct spelling and grammar. In truth, this essay is more of a collaboration between Betsy and I. She had take the class from the same instructor the year before. Many of the concepts discussed are largely extrapolations and enhancements of ideas she expressed. She got a B+ on her version; I got an A on mine :).

After reading different examples about what wilding is, I couldn’t have agreed more with Derber. Even if we don’t think we see it, wilding happens in our everyday lives. I completely believe that someone is always looking to step on someone else’s toes to get their way, whether it is intentional or not. We’re all human, and it’s bound to happen. Whether it be cheating on a test to get ahead of the class or I also believe that people in today’s society would rather take shortcuts and go the easy route than work hard for whatever it may be they are working for. As Derber said on page 17, “Americans looked up to the business leaders and politicians who got rich the fastest” and that is exactly what people want; to get what they want, and they want it instantly. So of course, that means wilding will start to happen so they can get whatever they

Throughout time, many people have given up their normal lives in order to live simply. Whether it’s going out and living in the wild alone or giving up electricity and running water. “Sometimes the weight of civilization can be overwhelming. The fast pace ... the burdens of relationships ... the political strife ... the technological complexity — it's enough to make you dream of escaping to a simpler life more in touch with nature.” (Nelson) Some just can’t handle it, but some have too. Whether it’s criminal, religious, research reasons, or the world is just too much to handle living out in the wild happens for a reason and there are certain things that influence it.

In An American Childhood by Annie Dillard, Dillard reminisces on her many adventures throughout her childhood living in Pittsburgh. Her stories explain her school, her home life, her family, and growing up. Dillard also talks about changes in her life, and how they affect her, and how she felt about others around her. One’s childhood is a crucial part of life, because it’s a time of learning more than any other time of life. Childhood is a time of curiosity and realization. What you learn in your childhood has a big impact on how you make decisions and act as an adult.

You can judge a society by its treatment of the old, the weak, the helpless and the needy. Through the narrative conventions of foreshadowing and characterisation, John Steinbeck, in his novel Of Mice And Men, published in 1937, is able to effectively reveal the imperfections of America’s capitalist

Throughout history, people encounter a stage in their lives where they feel the necessity to assert their independence and challenge their abilities and self-worth. In the book, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, the author shares his understanding and kinship with the main character, Chris McCandless, a young man who thrusts himself into a life of solitude and a harsh environment during his search for meaning to his life. Krakauer depicts himself and McCandless as modern day transcendentalists with an abundance of competency, resourcefulness and skills as naturalists. Although McCandless chose to experience a life of solitude and face the hazards that nature presents, his lack of preparedness prevented him from completing his endeavor successfully.

Secondly, Dillard believes also that the lifestyle of a weasel, if lived and followed by a human, will deliver this person to a successful life. As Dillard references in the story, and also in the introductory paragraph, Weasels live on necessity while people are living on choice. By this, she is implying that weasels live their everyday lives day by day, they do not stress about what is to come next, the focus on what they need to get done at that moment, not what is down the road. Weasels intellectual ability allows them to base their actions off of instinct, rather than off of research, predictions and estimations. Weasels are able to figure out what the best option is for them at any given moment, they do not over-analyze what may be coming their way; weasels just live their lives the way they should believe: carefree. When Dillard describes humans as thriving off of choice, this really begins to make readers think that what she is saying is true. Everyday that a person wakes up, he/she is immediately bombarded with possibility and question. Should I make my bed? Which bottle of shampoo should I use? What shirt should I wear to day? Are some of the question people may ask themselves as they wake up and prepare for the day. We are able to make decision at every point in are life, and some decisions can make or break your career; one bad decision could even take away your family, house

In this quote, Dillard is supposing that humans often become engrossed in the selfish desire to obtain more; whether it be wealth, power, or how others perceive them. Personally, it is easy to see correlation between the mindset I carry and Dillard’s perspective of her encounter with the weasel. Life can be unquestionably overwhelming at times, as a result of this I often picture myself in the life of someone completely incompatible to mine. From my standpoint, their life may be perceived as stress-free and full of freedom, but I am unaware of the challenges that they may as well endure throughout their existence. When Dillard made eye contact with the weasel she experienced 60 seconds of blissful emptiness. Taking time to reflect on your values compared to how others attain theirs is demonstrated crucially in this piece. Dillard states, “I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it” (8). According to the way I view the world, the point Dillard is attempting to get across to the reader is that freedom can be attained by anyone no matter the circumstance, you can be who you want to be with no limitation. I always try to get the most out of

Annie Dillard’s essay “Living Like Weasels” exhibits the mindless, unbiased, and instinctive ways she proposes humans should live by observing a weasel at a nearby pond close to her home. Dillard encounters about a sixty second gaze with a weasel she seems to entirely connect with. In turn, this preludes a rapid sequence of questions and propositions about “living as we should”. Unfortunately, we tend to consume our self with our surroundings and distractions in life, which is not a problem until we are blatantly told. How have we strayed so far from our once instinctive lifestyle?

     Indeed, we toil the best of our days, and “fritter away our lives by detail. ( )”, in order to earn the perishable items we acquire by destroying the ever resilient gift we have been given. We all live “meanly, likes ants… ( )”, and we forget to stop and look at our lives from a different perspective. In fact, our minds are constipated with thoughts we entertain to feel important, and do the job, to once again achieve greatness through our “things.” Our lives are so complex for such unjust reasons, and we all ponder the question that a wise man once asked, “why, should we live with such hurry and waste of life? ( )”

Chris McCandless and Buck serve as examples of the archetype of the wild through their experiences of leaving where they feel most comfortable and answering the call of the wild. They show that each experience is inimitable because the wild is unique to every individual. For Buck, the wild is a place outside of civilization and his dependence on man, where the external threats of nature exist and he must prove himself as a true animal with instincts for survival. In McCandless' case, the place outside of civilization is actually an escape from his fears because the wild for him is in relationships, where the threat of intimacy exists and he must learn to trust others for happiness. This is because for each of us, the wild is what we

In contrast to Dillard’s essay and her overall message on how we shouldn’t live life behind a camera, but yet go out and experience things for ourselves, made me think about how you see yourself as a person. No matter who you are, you have never seen your whole body with your own eyes, only a reflection. It’s freaky if you think about it long enough because you look in the mirror and you see this person standing looking back, and that person is you. Every person is concerned on how others view them no matter what the case. Plus, even more so now because of all the social media that blasts your self-image that you create for yourself by posting endless selfies and pictures of you on cool trips, all in hopes to boost your self-esteem by getting

This comic strip is called “Explaining creativity” and is composed by Scott Adams. It effectively covers the difficulties that we have separating the correlational from casual explanations of creativity. Creative people cannot stop themselves from creating and this a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder(OCD). In the comic, Dilbert is expressing the fact that is creative as he has ADHD, Dyslexia, Bipolar Disorder, as well as Schizophrenia. People with ADHD often generate new ideas and have unique ways of looking at things and as a result, brilliant creative insights emerge from these times when the mind is doing its own thing. Like ADHD, Dyslexia comes with many benefits such as having the ability to use their critical thinking when solving

lifestyle affords humanity, from both the dangers of the natural world and from ourselves.  Before the advent of civilization, mankind dwelt in the wild in small bands, and according to Freud even these small bands were only created in order to provide even minimal order (Freud 63).  Such a lifestyle naturally afforded little in the way of protection or enjoyment when much of mankind’s time was spent trying to fight just to

After graduating from college McCandless, the protagonist in Penn’s Into the Wild, donates all his savings to charity, burns all of the money he has and goes on a journey into the wilderness, removing himself from society. He suggests that the wild will kill the disciplines that have been instilled within him, what he refers to as: “the false being within” and being ‘poisoned by civilization’. He feels