Living Like Weasels

Rhetorical Precis:

In her essay “Living Like Weasels” (1974), Annie Dillard urges her audience to step back from their daily stresses and live a carefree life. She illustrates this lifestyle by examining the weasel and its “wild” and nonchalant nature, and uses personal anecdote, alliteration and metaphors to convey her ideas. Dillard’s purpose is to relay to her audience her dream life, one without care and full of passive appreciation for nature, and to let them know that they can enjoy the same way of life as well. Her openness about her own life creates a positive relationship with her audience, people who appreciate good literature and the beauty of nature.

Response

1. The numbered sections in the essay are very helpful for the reader because it divides the essay into sections. It’s kind of like big paragraphs containing little paragraphs inside, if that makes sense at all. For example Section I discusses, at length, the weasel and how it lives. To the reader, this is a very abrupt beginning to the essay. Why is Dillard randomly talking about weasels? In Section II, she explains why she was even thinking about weasels - because she exchanged a long glance with one at Hollins Pond the week before. The whole essay is a stream of consciousness, and Dillard is all over the place with her thoughts. The sections proved to be a reader's dream.

2. The line “noticing everything, remembering nothing…” is very telling and encompasses Dillard’s main point of her essay. Throughout her whole “Living Like Weasels,” Dillard is trying to explain that we can learn something from the way the weasel lives - without desiring unnecessary commodities, rather being content with what it needs. All the weasel knows is what it needs. The weasel notices everything; it is highly aware of his surroundings and can react to a dangerous situation if it may arise. But the weasel doesn’t remember things, meaning it does not hang onto things and get all emotional and whatnot. This makes life much simpler for it, and it lives a happy life eating, mating and scurrying in the parks.

5. Dillard emphasizes the “wild” nature of the weasel and suggests humans could stand to be a bit more wild in their own lives. This is a fascinating proposal, and it goes hand in hand with everything else she suggested we learn from the weasel. The weasel is a creature of instinct - it does what it wants to do without necessarily weighing the consequences beforehand. While such behavior could possibly prove detrimental, many times we hold ourselves down by constantly thinking about what others will say about what we do. Sometimes one needs to stop overthinking life, and as Nike likes to say, just do it.