dillard1 - Harvey Sham Eric Malczewski October 6 2006 A...

Harvey Sham
Eric Malczewski
October 6, 2006
A Total Experience from “Total Eclipse”
In the essay “Total Eclipse,” Annie Dillard ingeniously outlines not only the
wonders of a solar eclipse but also suggests intuitive perceptions on life, death, and other
areas. By using brilliant analogies and rhetoric of significance, Dillard grasps a purely
cosmic event and morphs it into her own emotional experience.
The author presents certain images in such a dramatic fashion that readers have no
choice but to give in to her words. As the moon is completing its phase over the sun,
Dillard captures the moment by writing that she “[s]aw on his skull the darkness of night
mixed with the colors of day” (482). It seems as if her husband, the object of this
description, is stuck in this strange moment of half-light half-dark, as Dillard recalls the
events of past generations. She states that at that moment, she “[w]as standing in a movie
of hillside grasses filmed in the Middle Ages” (481-482). The author tries to show that