LITR 5535: American
Romanticism
Student Presentation on Reading Selections, fall 2003
Sawsan Sanjak
Oct. 20, 2003
Presentation: Pilgrim at Tinker
Creek
Topic: Desire and Loss
Annie Dillard opens her book by wondering whether the cat Tom was trying to ask for milk or whether he was sharpening his claws over her chest. There are two answers for such an inquiry. One is that the blood over her chest stands for the tender relation between the mother and her baby. The baby touches the mother’s breast with his or her fingers as an indication to hunger. Here, touching is the means for the baby to fulfill his or her desire for milk. The second interpretation for the baby’s or the cat’s desire is that the scratching or the sharpening of the fingers or the claws ends up in blood prints. Annie wants to know what kind of blood is that? Is it the blood of a murder?? OR is it the bearable and acceptable blood that sometimes comes out when the baby sucks his or her mother’s breast?
Annie suggests two interpretations for the blood sign over her body. Each one offers a completely different extreme. The first one is the blood of pain and sacrifice that the mother enjoys in giving to her baby, whereas the second one is the blood of violence. In both cases Annie washes the blood over her body and hence any sign or connection with that mark has faded and disappeared. Who can tell now if that sharpening was really a sign of love or a camouflage to a hidden murder? Annie lost all trace with the blood prints and so how can she discover the real intentions for that blood? In fact, it might be the blood of a sexual desire since it grows high and when it is nourished, it turns to a lower extent, to what we call a satisfying loss. However, when Dillard loses that momentarily desire, she washes herself as a preparation for a new desire. This shift from a high desire to a complete loss portrays most of the scenes in Dillard’s narrative. As if she wants to tell her readers that no matter how we try to catch or keep our lovely moments still we cannot and hence, they always come to an end (answer inspired from Dr. White).
With this Dillard starts her journey of desire and loss. Annie chooses nature as the source for all human’s inquiry. It is through nature that Dillard hopes to find a meaning to all living things around us. Starting from her cat’s story and Dillard is trying to find a certain connection between her and the cat, later on, between different living creatures, between man and God, God and the universe, the scientist and nature. However, Dillard transforms nature into a product to be examined.
Dillard’s text is a good example for portraying the attitudes associated with desire and loss especially when the individual is in nature or separate from the masses (objective 1b). Though nature writing is known for its romantic and peaceful atmosphere, however, in Dillard’s work, nature seems full of the gothic. It is much influenced by the modern technology associated with the camera’s issue and its influence on the images seen by the observer.
Dillard's desire is to see and depict contradictions in life. Dillard enters between the hunter and the prey and between beauty and violence. She examines the worlds of different creatures and hence, she observes the violent act of some creatures in a cold eye. Dillard does not turn her back against the violent scene; instead she takes her time in describing it. Her narrative is tougher than the camera for the camera is faster and takes one shot of the scene, whereas Dillard's narrative represents every single detail of the violence she sees. On pages (7-8 PATC) Dillard watches how a giant bug sucked a frog, and what was left of it was a bag of skin floating on the surface of water. What does Dillard want to reach through this scene? Dillard wants to learn as much as possible about the horrors of the natural world around her. She wants to nourish her desire and take a wider view, to really see and describe what is going on the world (PATC 11). Yet, whenever she takes a glimpse of something or explores a new thing it vanishes or she loses it.
Dillard on page (12 PATC) is amazed to see how at four o'clock the sky was covered with dark clouds then at four thirty the sky became clear. Again another darkness appears and everything is drained of its light as if sucked into shadows. The shadows of the cliffs and the mountains appear again when the light suddenly goes on. Regarding this swift contradiction in the matters of nature Dillard declares her humble deeds and that is she is not a scientist who attempts to find answers for nature's sudden change from a dark state into a clear one. Dillard says that she is an infant who aims to learn; hence, she describes herself as the instrument of the hunt (PATC 11). The hunt symbolizes Dillard's desire in nature. Whenever Dillard hunts for something she finds a new event that catches her attention and thus she becomes interested in the new phenomena as on page (14 PATC): “I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell.” After each discovery Dillard comes out empty handed for whenever she achieves a kind of fulfillment, she discovers her loss for something else within the same experience.
Seeing is essential in Dillard's narrative for all the things she talks about are hunted through her personal vision. Dillard keeps using the 1st person pronoun "I see what I expect " (PATC 20). This indicates her determination and confidence in what she sees. Dillard assumes power and control over the object of her desire. Consequently, her vision can be classified in two terms, seeing with her binoculars and seeing without her binoculars. Dillard's vision is accurate and focused when she has her binoculars whereas when her eye is naked, Dillard can see a million thing, and so she loses focus and cannot put together the parts she sees (PATC 25-6).
Now Dillard is in danger for she does not have her binoculars. She sees the world through her naked eye. Here she lets her senses discover the world. Hence, she falls in confusion " I wander…echo of my thin cries" (PATC 27). The last words reveal that Dillard hears only herself. She is a part from the world; she exists within herself. Dillard admits the fact that her eyes alone cannot solve analogy tests by using figures (PATC 33). Thus, she needs her binoculars in order to be accurate about what she sees. In fact, seeing as Dillard hints seems more beneficial when she uses her binoculars, it is like being armed with a camera whereas when she is not armed by this technology she turns to be an uncertain observer.
Dillard's two ways of seeing embody two different ways of acknowledging the world. One is vague and that is when you see many unfocused things while the other is precise for it goes deep inside things and examines their single parts. In either ways Dillard is trying to break certain bars-what are they? Are they the bars of knowledge? Or are they the bars that separate life from death? (Discussion Question).
Class
Responses:
Sheila: Dillard is seeking knowledge as she goes through the world. She corresponds
to Thoreau.
Sawsan: Technology seems to play an important role in Dillard's knowledge. How does then Dillard's camera reflect the world’s technology? ( 1st follow-up Question).
Mary: "Through our shutter opening". I saw a chipmunk poking out a hole- I got a picture, but it wasn't the same.
Charlie: You're not seeing what the camera sees!
Mary: Yes, it just wasn't as good.
Sheila: But technology doesn't actually change what you see.
Holly: A camera catches, forever, a moment of time and you can relate it usually to someone else.
Rosalyn: But you can't truly share the moment.
Sheila: The writer does the sharing and not the camera.
Kristy: "Kodak" would disagree " Share the moment, Share the life" is their slogan.
Dr. White: The camera seems intrusive at the moment (at a party), but desirable 10 years later.
Rosalyn: People’s reactions to your pictures aren’t ever as meaningful.
Holly: I forgot to take pictures because you’re caught up.
Charley: Dillard says that when she realizes what she sees, she loses the sense of the experience.
Rosalyn: It’s an interesting desire/loss paradox-you desire to capture the memory, but in photographing it you lose some of it.
Sawsan: A camera has a positive side of showing beauty and hiding ugliness. Dillard’s words, like about the frog are more powerful than a picture.
Dr. White: Film is a more surface medium, but literature allows a psychological element.
Sawsan: In relation to literature, why does Dillard describe the ugliness of the frog’s death? What does she want to reveal? That death is ugly and horrifying!! (2nd Follow-up Question).
April P.: It’s the sublime; it’s fascinating and repulsing.
Shelia: It’s part of nature writing-she has detailed.
Rosalyn: She fades into the background.
Charley: Dillard reveals everything that is happening underfoot that we don’t notice. The frog thing was like poetic justice.
Sawsan: It’s showing the nature of wilderness.
Dr. White: what about connection to the opening page?
Kristy: It’s her connection to nature. She sees something and isn’t repulsed by it, possibly disturbing. It establishes her connection to nature.
Charley: She wants to know where the blood is from.
Holly: She shows her love of both sides of nature- loving and violent.
Sheila: It also has an element of nostalgia, “I had a cat…” (PATC 3).
April P.: It ties to the book-we relate to her having a cat. It’s not gross nature it’s familiar.
Sawsan: Dillard feels nothing is fixed. There is a probability of beauty and violence. We should have a wider view of the two.
Sherry: Perhaps a search for reality?
Sawsan: But we never find reality and on the way something else distracts us. It keeps going on in a chain.
Dr. White: The sublime is definitely an appropriate reading.
One thing about the cat, is that she calls it a Tomcat. And it’s in bed with her, pummeling for milk-it’s sexual. Nature writing does this often to provide dynamics and tension when there is only one person alone in nature.