annie dillard = bosom friend

I am very disappointed to see so many negative reviews for "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" on amazon. I think the fractured radiance mentality is either possessed entirely by the individual or not at all. Although I feel that the way I view the world sets me up for occasionally too dramatic emotional reflection, I am happy to have been granted the gift to look at the world as Dillard does. Below is the conclusion to the "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" essay I wrote for class. I named it, "Fractured Radiance."

For Annie Dillard, beauty is everywhere. It is war and peace, life and death, winter and summer. Rather than take the stance that cruelty is necessary as a means of recognizing glory or that splendor is other-worldly, spotless, even divine, she insists on their messy intermingling. She encourages us to ground ourselves in reality, to realize that we may not change the nature of the world, but we must still live in it. This is her doctrine and beauty is her God. In Dillard’s words, we are “not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land” (230). And if we are falling, she says, “at least [we] can twirl” (273). The earth holds mysteries and moments of revelation. Beauty is attained when the heavy curtain between shadow and light is torn asunder, when the burning sun bursts forth, when we may at last see “the tree with the lights in it” (Matthew 27:51; Dillard 36).