Memory of discontent

(The book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek can be read on Google Books)

“Curiosity gets the best of us,” or so they say. Innocence is the domineering element that wanders in the darkest shadows of every person, maybe even within that curiosity. This innocence, it lingers with good intentions, it appears with unfortunate results. An element purely depicted like innocence, bears such evil consequences.


Annie Dillard's excerpt from “The Fixed” in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the entity of this very innocence that causes such guilt at the hands of its outcome. Dillard recollects a childhood memory of a moth's cocoon which in the curiosity of children was given a detour in fate, and in the protection of a glass jar was paralyzed into misery.

In the excerpt, Dillard presents her memory with a conviction of the innocence playing such a murderous role on the abrupt interference with natural cycles. Dillard uses finespun rhetorical strategies to produce her discontent and guilt regarding the innocence and the implications on natural cycles.

First, Dillard makes use of invigorating imagery throughout the excerpt. This imagery develops the innocence of the students, and splashes color on this portrait of the moth. In line 2 of paragraph 1, Dillard immediately exposes her desire to add a lot of imagery to the excerpt, she states the month is January, but continues by adding the description of “doily snowflakes taped to the schoolroom panes.” As the reader, you develop the sense that the children are young, and it is just a normal, innocent classroom. It is an image that almost anyone can relate to, and it feathers the situation for what comes later in the text. By adding this minute imagery, Dillard creates her guilt later in text by giving contrast to what the children should be acting like in this learning environment to how they interfered with a natural cycle. She shows how she now knows as an adult that the innocent behavior they performed in an elementary setting only gives her remorse and discontent with the situation. Like the previous example, Dillard's explanation of the moth's character creates a foundation for Dillard to later tear down the innocence with her attitude of guilt and discontent. “The Polyphemus moth in the picture looked like a mighty wraith, a beating essence of the hardwood forest, alien-skinned and brown, with spread, blind eyes,” (Line 11, Paragraph 1). The preceding example is the imagery that Dillard uses to make clear what the moth will look like. A very important piece to this imagery is the “mighty wraith” that she outlines. The addition of strength to the moth, only makes the disruption of its natural cycle all the more solidified. It is important that Dillard doesn't just use the moth's strength to create its image, but also she uses many descriptions of beauty which again develops the guilt and discontent she reveals later in the text. She provides powerful imagery with a delicate touch, and then uses this imagery as a base on which to reveal her discomfort. The images she provides in the beginning is a specific strategy she designs to lead into the image of the moth crawling down the driveway. This last line of the excerpt is the brain-child of several rhetorical devices, but they all act in summing up the author's guilt. The guilt being enlarged at the end is powered by the imagery that she had used at the beginning of this excerpt as mentioned.

Speaking of the last line, it is the last line that uses repetition demandingly which lets all the light shine on her guilt for the situation and her uneasiness of this final image. “The Polyphemus moth is still crawling down the driveway, crawling down the driveway hunched, crawling down the driveway on six furred feet, forever,” (Line 44, Paragraph 6). When Dillard writes this line, she puts to paper her own replay of an image she cannot extinguish from her memory. The moth in reality is not at all still crawling, but within her own memory, within this text it is “forever” crawling. This line distinguishes guilt in a bold fashion; this is the line that concludes her attitude and the effect she and her classmates had on this moth's natural life cycle. Another thing that makes this line powerful is the fact that it wasn't something she had seen happen, she observed the moth receding down the driveway for a short while, but the repetition of it crawling is something she thought to be inevitable. The inevitability she infers only projects the depth to which they interfered with the moth's life. The use of repetition makes the line stick out to the reader, and it is able to drive at the importance it has on the author. It is one of those lines that can't be forgotten; it is one of the only lines in the text that really drives throughly at emotion, attitude, and impact. Another use of repetition in the excerpt is the point of this very large moth, she uses its name, Polyphemus, nearly each time she refers to the moth, and she describes it to have strength and legs “shaggy as a bear's.” When Dillard continuously makes reference to the moth's size and strength with a simile like the bear example, she exemplifies her discontent to how young innocent students were able to disrupt this large creation's life. This excerpt is in large scale a repetition of a memory that Dillard would seemingly rather forget.

Next, Dillard's style of syntax reveals her attitude towards the innocence and the interference of natural cycles. Her short sentence structure at the beginning of all the paragraphs, except for the first and last, many times shapes the path in which she slowly reveals her guilt and discontent. “It was coming. There was no stopping it now, January or not,” (Line 22, Paragraph 3). The beginning to this paragraph exposes Dillard's guilt in a very straight forward, reality directive. She makes reference to her discomfort with the situation that she caused by warming the cocoon, and also brings forth the guilt that comes when you are the cause of something bad. The sentence structure puts forth the scenario at hand, and allows for Dillard to be held at large for her disruption in a natural cycle. “The teacher fades, the classmates fade, I fade;” (Line 24, Paragraph 3). This line's specific sentence structure, and arrangement expresses Dillard's attitude of the subject. Dillard first of all uses herself last in the sentence; by doing so, she sheds light on the importance of the event to her life. It shows the reader that this event is truly imprinted upon her memory. Like the context of the sentence, the line seems to descend and also fade away, and if she uses “I” first, the longer words at the end would hinder the effect of the fading tone. In conjunction to her attitude, this sentence structure portrays Dillard as the focus, and by doing so, Dillard's craft ministers her guilt and discontent on the burden placed on the moth through an innocent disruption of its life. Dillard's syntax ultimately flows together well in order to create the ever lasting final image of the moth's forever journey.

In her use of diction, Dillard creates a parallel of words that would make reference to her adult-self, and words that can be associated to a young innocent child. For example in line 16 of paragraph 2, Dillard uses the words “warmed” and “squirmed,” these are words that would be used by a young child. When placed in the situation of the text; it only makes sense for Dillard to use these words, because she is attempting to relieve the guilt from her adulthood onto her childhood. She understands that the movement of the moth were clear signs to not continue to hold the moth so tightly, yet she does, thus disrupting a natural cycle. Dillard's guilt in the situation causes her to avoid the memory by fading it with childish verbs. In line 23 of paragraph 3, Dillard uses the words “frayed” and “furious,” these are words that would be coming from the adult version of herself. By using these words, Dillard is taking notice of the situation, and with the focus zeroed in on the moth, it means that the guilt doesn't have to be applied to her childhood. However, the two words still provide that point of the moth's strength, and in turn relates back to Dillard's intrusion of the natural cycle. Although she tries to advert her guilt, like the memory, like the moth crawling, it is inevitable.

Lastly, a language device that Dillard uses becomes a directive towards her attitude of innocence and its disruption of natural cycles. Dillard uses the teacher as a symbolic figure of the topic at hand. She turns the teacher, the authority figure, into the person that stands by and is ignorant towards what is happening. “She put it, still heaving and banging, in the ubiquitous Mason jar,” (Line 21, Paragraph 2). “Someone—it must have been the teacher—had let the moth out,” (Line 39, Paragraph 5). These two lines show an obvious ignorant character, who had not known what to do in any situation regarding the moth. The teacher had let the kids take the cocoon, because they were getting restless, and then she allowed them to warm it without supervision causing it to breakout too soon. These descriptions are symbolic to the people that choose to avoid problems, or only do what they feel is satisfactory for the moment. This depiction of the teacher supports a part of Dillard's attitude of discontent with having a teacher, who took no recognition of the opposing results of her actions on the moth's natural cycle. There is a sense of frustration from Dillard to the teacher, but by assuming the teacher let the moth go, it is interrupted that Dillard already knows the teacher to lack in responsibility as an authority figure.

Dillard's guilt and discontent is intertwined in her rhetorical strategies in order for them to be read as her deciding attitude of innocence and its interference of natural cycles. The rhetoric embodies her attitude and gives way to the address of innocence and its effects. Ultimately, the attitude leads to successfully sending the message of thinking about your innocent actions, because the results might be the moth forever crawling.