Total Eclipse

Total Eclipse by Annie Dillard is a great example of creative nonfiction. She is allusive, descriptive, speaking to the reader, and you feel as though what she is telling you absolutely happened regardless if it actually did. This was by far my favorite short story that we have read this semester. The language and adjectives she used made it very interesting to read and helped to keep the reader engaged. I really like the sentence on page 91, “I turned back to the sun. It was going. The sun was going, and the world was wrong.” For some reason the way she described the world and everything that she was seeing in it as “wrong” struck me. Maybe it stood out because she uses such descriptive words throughout her entire essay, that the simplicity of the word “wrong” felt non-simplistic. Regardless, I found it fascinating. She goes on to describe why everything around looks “wrong”, such as the platinum grasses.

Another line from her essay that really just stood out to me was in the second paragraph down from the top on page 90. She starts this description off by saying matter-of-factly, “What you see in an eclipse is entirely different from what you know.” She ends by saying, “What you see if much more convincing than any wild-eyed theory you may know.” It was not so much the descriptive part in the middle of the paragraph that stood out to me; but these two lines. I feel them to be extremely true and believable in this case. I cannot begin to comprehend what she saw, and I can say this because of how in-depth her descriptions are. Even though I have read all of her descriptions, and over 20 pages of detail of how this eclipse looked, her words could never compare to actually seeing what the people who were there that day did. On page 95 she says, “The lenses of telescopes and cameras can no more cover the breadth and scale of the visual array than language can cover the breadth and simultaneity of internal experience.” This sentence says it all; to believe it, you have to actually see it.

She also uses a lot of metaphors throughout her essay, which really allows the reader to connect to what she is describing and seeing. On page 93 she says, “At once this disk of sky slid over the sun like a lid. The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover.” I think that the way she describes things is very unique in that she is doing it for the reader’s benefit; to put them where she was at. I have always found metaphors to be annoying, and allusive. But the way that she uses them, and maybe the simple fact that she is describing an eclipse, really makes me relate to the metaphors. Throughout the entire essay, she is very in-depth, and it almost seems like she is all over the place, but always brings it back around to relate. I really enjoyed reading this essay.