on TOTAL ECLIPSE

TOTAL ECLIPSE relates the story of a journey to a city in Washington "near Yakima" where the author, Annie Dillard, has traveled (with her husband, Gary Clevidence) to view a solar eclipse. Within the essay, the author speaks of the expectations she has about the eclipse and her experience viewing a partial eclipse in 1970; however, midway through the essay she explains that a partial eclipse "bears almost no relation to a total eclipse." She continues by explaining that witnessing a partial eclipse "bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him, or as flying in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane." Within the story, the author's anticipation of the event turns to a form of grief (or even shame, perhaps (the images of the spectators "streaming down the hillsides", driving away in their cars, and never looking back hints that such an emotion may be shared)). Indeed, the human spectators (or, at the very least, the author) in this essay are humbled by the experience of the solar eclipse; despite having the advantages of modern technology and ideologies, they are still in awe of the magnificence of this natural occurrence ("From all the hills came screams," the author writes).

One of the difficult things with producing an essay that is a meditation on one's reaction to a specific phenomenon (and its emotional resonance) is keeping readers' attentions throughout the piece (it could be argued that keeping readers' attention is an important consideration when engaging in any type of writing). This seemed to be a problematic issue when we were discussing the essay in class. I would agree that this essay does seem to meander a bit. The author spends a considerable amount of space exploring seemingly mundane details (a painting in her hotel room of a bald clown's head made out of vegetables, the contents of a roadside diner, the hues that she experiences during the eclipse) in her journey to relate this story. In the end, however, this is still a moving piece of writing that reflects the author's struggle to make sense of her (and our) place in the natural world around us.