The Weasel
In the essays “Living Like Weasels” the author opens by stating a fact and then posing a question. The fact is that weasels are wild. The question is what is he thinking? Shortly thereafter, Dillard has her first encounter with a weasel in the wild with whom she locked eyes briefly before disappearing. In that moment before the weasel takes off, she claims to have penetrated into the animal’s head and to know what was secrets lurked there. From this encounter develops her conception that to live life like a weasel is to live in the moment, “noticing everything and remembering nothing.”
Allen Ginsberg
The idiosyncratic Beat poet Allen Ginsberg accompanies Dillard to a most unexpected destination. “Disneyland” is an essay that reveals just how bizarre Baudrillard’s simulacrum of America is through the weird presence of Ginsberg as a fellow tour guide hosing a group of Chinese writers.
Julie Norwich
“God’s Tooth” is an essay about a little girl named Julie Norwich who survives a small plane crash along with her father. Julie, however, does not walk away from the wreckage unscathed. In fact, she suffers horrible burns which disfigure her face. Julie’s needless suffering becomes the mechanism by which Dillard reaches a conclusion that rather than great and good and awesome, God is a brutal traitor to His creation: human beings.
The Seminole Alligator Wrestler
This character appears but briefly in an essay by the writer about being a writer. His appearance is immediately prefaced with a second-person address to the reader that they are a Seminole alligator wrestler in metaphorical terms, with the sentence taking on the symbolic role of the gator. The she relates the story of a literal alligator wrestler of the Seminole tribe in Florida who finally lost his first match to an opponent and whose remains would not be discovered until a week later.
The Sun and the Moon
The sun (and to a lesser extent, the moon) is the star—no pun intended—of one of Dillard’s most acclaimed essays, “Total Eclipse.” This is a tale of driving five hours specifically to be right in the direct path of the movement of the sun during at the moment it is briefly eclipsed by the moon. The result is a powerful testament to the ability of technology to make even what may well be the most awe-inspiring astronomical phenomenon available for humans to witness as it happens obscene mundane and commonplace. In the hands of a writer for whom witnessing the light of the earth—the light of life—snuffed out so that the world around her turned to darkness, the sun regains its majesty and the moon’s ability to block out that inconceivable ball of pure energy takes on a power and magnificence far beyond what any large, orange, autumnal presence can lend it.
