Assignment #2: Reading Annie Dillard, "Total Eclipse"

"The hotel lobby was a dark, derilict room, narrow as a corridor, and seemingly without air."

This phrase stopped me in my tracks because in one sentence she paints the grim picture of the hotel lobby. This effectively gives the reader a sense of a cheap hotel that one would not normally want to stay in. She uses in depth description to make the reader feel like they could actually be sitting there. She uses the simile narrow as a corridor.


"The hill was five hundred feet high. Long winter-killed grass covering it, as high as your knees. We climbed and rested sweating and cold."

Here she describes an extremely high hill that they must climb, snow up to their knees as they sweated but were cold at the same time. In the first sentence you could just imagine standing at the bottom of a hill looking up 500 feet knowing that your have to climb in the freezing cold. She is mostly descriptive here there are no metaphors or similes.


"The skin on his face moved like thin bronze plating that would peel."

Here she makes a comparison of the skin on his face and peeling bronze plating. This is a simile. She describes the wind hitting his face and making his skin sort of peel back. This means that the wind must have been blowing very hard.


Annie Dillard uses an eloborate style because of her in depth description. She uses alot of similes in describing the moment or character. I believe her writing is very effective because she brought me in to exactly how she was feeling and what was going on around her.