Biblical Reference In Annie Dillard's Writing
Nature and Biblical Reference in Annie Dillard’s Writing The Writing by Annie Dillard is very intriguing, she shows with no guidance from another source how people must see for themselves, so they can truly observe nature in its fullest. She often questions the very foundation of human existence. Annie Dillard also focuses on the creation and evolution and frequently questions God and his impact on the nature and human being. God appears a lot in her writing and Annie Dillard often shows her ambivalence toward God. I would like to focus on the relationship between God, human being and nature and also try to explain the figure of God as Annie Dillard sees it and find a biblical reference in her writing which would be an example of God’s almightiness. Also, there is a conflict between Annie Dillard’s illusion of God, since her thoughts are not united in this topic and reader could get easily confused, whether she is devout or skeptical about God. In the next paragraph I would like to focus on Dillard’s use of the words God and god. Annie Dillard often uses the word God
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or god in her writing, but God does not seem to be very positive figure. Even though Annie Dillard is a religious person and she attends church, she does not blindly celebrate God. She does not understand why there is all the suffering, when God is the all-powerful creator of the world. The answer she finds is, that pain and suffering are something similar to a megaphone trough which God sends his emotion to ordinary people. Sometimes reader may get confused by Annie Dillard’s use of the words God and god. God with capital G always refers to Jewish and Christian religion. God is always the God of the Bible and she also speaks of the God of Genesis who “makes the guarantee that there will be night and day and seasons of the year” (Dillard 90). But Annie Dillard refuses to believe that God can do everything. In her Seeing, she points out that God cannot prevent people from going blind, and as she sadly observes “we do need reminding, not of what God can do, but of what he cannot do”(Dillard 61). Annie Dillard always refers to God, when written with capital G, as to him. She always mentions his cruelty and doubts the possibility of God being a female figure, because she would not allow such sorrow. God written with lower case g is not any less important figure. Annie Dillard refers to god or gods when she talks about natural gods or ancient Greek gods, also the every day miracles, such as a tree in the wind or bird caught by her cat. When it comes to the difference between God and god, it seems like the important difference is in godliness. When godliness becomes overwhelming Dillard always uses term God. Unlike god or gods, God participates in the natural processes and is a figure which could be blamed for the suffering. Next paragraph could be a description of the conflict between natural world and how ordinary person sees it and thinks of it. Annie Dillard is often compared to romantic authors of the nineteenth century. She seems to be broken apart when it comes to thoughts of the Big Bang theory and the perception of Darwinian evolution and the world creation by God. Her scientific knowledge could be one of the reasons for her ambivalence toward God. As an example of cruelty in the world she uses animals, whose behavior is very incomprehensible to people. One of her examples is mating mantises, where the phenomenon of sexual cannibalism is very common. When mating the female mantis starts feeding herself with biting off the male’s head. The mating does not end and surprisingly it actually becomes even more vigorous. Annie Dillard is very interested in many kinds of zoological and botanical events and some parts of her work are related only to stories of eating. The law of nature is not the survival of the strongest individuals. Dillard thinks that it is more likely the matter of accident, luck or simply being in the right place at the right time. Annie Dillard is convinced that “evolution loves death more than it loves you or me” (Dillard 171). These natural events seem to be cruel only to us, human beings. At this point Annie Dillard goes back to God and suggests that he created people and gave them the specific qualities such as sympathy, morals and care for reason. Her quote “It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator -- our very self-consciousness -- is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution cutting us off at both ends” shows how she feels the difference between human beings and animals. Many people do not really see this feature of nature, but Annie Dillard is a very good observer, who does not just watch it, but also sees it. She believes that God created natural world cruel and amoral. The disjunction between natural beauty and natural hate caused the suffering and to see this diversity one must experience it himself. Dillard advices these people who would like to experience it themselves to always keep their eyes open. According to Annie Dillard there are two kinds of seeing. One involves rolling stones away and studying the bank and the other one also involves a letting go. This kind of seeing is more likely to be a moment of intense insight and, as she says, it is guaranteed that this moment will vanish. These moments are usually created by God and the spiritual part of human being. This paragraph should explain how God appears in Annie Dillard’s writing in person and how he really affects what is going on around us.
In Annie Dillard’s work Stalking there is a reference to Bible, where God talks to Moses: Moses said to God: I beseech thee, show me thy glory. And god said: Thou cannot see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. But he added: There is a place by me, and thou shall stand upon a rock and it shall come to pass, while my glory passed by, that I will put thee in a cliff of the rock, and will cover thee, with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shall see my back parts; but my face shall not be seen. (Dillard 207)
From this extract it seems as if God was omnipresent, as if he was always taking control over everything and it is only up to people how they would react and explain natural features to
themselves. There are no doubts that God plays a very important role in Annie Dillard’s work and that she might be a little uncertain herself, if she really is ambivalent toward God. In fact, in her real life she was very unsure of her own religious views, since she was raised Presbyterian but converted to Catholicism in her early twenties. Annie Dillard claims that it really does not matter what kind of qualities your God has. But reading through her works, it is uneasy to decide, how she really feels toward him. God’s absence and God’s presence are felt simultaneously and it is very difficult to define whether she is afraid of him or she is simply aware of him. One of the possibilities of what she might think of God is that she is angry with him, even though she has never really expressed such an attitude in her writing. It is believed that God is an all knowing being, but no one has ever been in direct contact with him. And of course there is the question many people ask every single day: What exactly does he want us to do, so we do not have to go through any suffering and pain? God and his powers are the reasons for human fear and when we think again about the cruel nature we really have to admit that world is not a warm and loving place. To conclude, Annie Dillard says that every kind of writing is a sort of creation. It is true about any kind of creation and every single one is meant to bring joy. Every creation is meant to be touching and giving. Annie Dillard says that she writes to make people happy, she tries to make them see as she sees and see what she sees. God in her eyes is a mystic figure and his creation is the only one where she has doubts, whether it brought happiness and joy. But God touching human being in any kind of sense always brings hope. He is an inscrutable figure. It is most probable to her that there is a God, but the answer to a question if he cares about his creation is probably not. Human’s attitude towards God is very difficult. As Annie Dillard says it is extraordinarily difficult to be able to believe. Hope is a lot easier.
One of the most famous quotes by Annie Dillard is accurate to her feelings toward God and his impact on a reader. Annie Dillard said: “Eskimo: ‘If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?’ Priest: ‘No, not if you did not know’. Eskimo: ‘Then why did you tell me?’”
Works cited
Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. 1973. Rpt. New York: Harper Collins
Johnson, Jone L. Annie Dillard Quotes. URL:
Bibliography
Primary sources:
Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. 1973. Rpt. New York: Harper Collins Dillard, Annie. For the Time Being. Knopf: 1999
Secondary sources:
Mitchell M. Harris. Masterplots II: Christian Literature. Salem Press, 2008. Ronda, Bruce A. Annie Dillard and The Fire of God. Christian Century New York: 1983
or god in her writing, but God does not seem to be very positive figure. Even though Annie Dillard is a religious person and she attends church, she does not blindly celebrate God. She does not understand why there is all the suffering, when God is the all-powerful creator of the world. The answer she finds is, that pain and suffering are something similar to a megaphone trough which God sends his emotion to ordinary people. Sometimes reader may get confused by Annie Dillard’s use of the words God and god. God with capital G always refers to Jewish and Christian religion. God is always the God of the Bible and she also speaks of the God of Genesis who “makes the guarantee that there will be night and day and seasons of the year” (Dillard 90). But Annie Dillard refuses to believe that God can do everything. In her Seeing, she points out that God cannot prevent people from going blind, and as she sadly observes “we do need reminding, not of what God can do, but of what he cannot do”(Dillard 61). Annie Dillard always refers to God, when written with capital G, as to him. She always mentions his cruelty and doubts the possibility of God being a female figure, because she would not allow such sorrow. God written with lower case g is not any less important figure. Annie Dillard refers to god or gods when she talks about natural gods or ancient Greek gods, also the every day miracles, such as a tree in the wind or bird caught by her cat. When it comes to the difference between God and god, it seems like the important difference is in godliness. When godliness becomes overwhelming Dillard always uses term God. Unlike god or gods, God participates in the natural processes and is a figure which could be blamed for the suffering. Next paragraph could be a description of the conflict between natural world and how ordinary person sees it and thinks of it. Annie Dillard is often compared to romantic authors of the nineteenth century. She seems to be broken apart when it comes to thoughts of the Big Bang theory and the perception of Darwinian evolution and the world creation by God. Her scientific knowledge could be one of the reasons for her ambivalence toward God. As an example of cruelty in the world she uses animals, whose behavior is very incomprehensible to people. One of her examples is mating mantises, where the phenomenon of sexual cannibalism is very common. When mating the female mantis starts feeding herself with biting off the male’s head. The mating does not end and surprisingly it actually becomes even more vigorous. Annie Dillard is very interested in many kinds of zoological and botanical events and some parts of her work are related only to stories of eating. The law of nature is not the survival of the strongest individuals. Dillard thinks that it is more likely the matter of accident, luck or simply being in the right place at the right time. Annie Dillard is convinced that “evolution loves death more than it loves you or me” (Dillard 171). These natural events seem to be cruel only to us, human beings. At this point Annie Dillard goes back to God and suggests that he created people and gave them the specific qualities such as sympathy, morals and care for reason. Her quote “It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator -- our very self-consciousness -- is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution cutting us off at both ends” shows how she feels the difference between human beings and animals. Many people do not really see this feature of nature, but Annie Dillard is a very good observer, who does not just watch it, but also sees it. She believes that God created natural world cruel and amoral. The disjunction between natural beauty and natural hate caused the suffering and to see this diversity one must experience it himself. Dillard advices these people who would like to experience it themselves to always keep their eyes open. According to Annie Dillard there are two kinds of seeing. One involves rolling stones away and studying the bank and the other one also involves a letting go. This kind of seeing is more likely to be a moment of intense insight and, as she says, it is guaranteed that this moment will vanish. These moments are usually created by God and the spiritual part of human being. This paragraph should explain how God appears in Annie Dillard’s writing in person and how he really affects what is going on around us.
In Annie Dillard’s work Stalking there is a reference to Bible, where God talks to Moses: Moses said to God: I beseech thee, show me thy glory. And god said: Thou cannot see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. But he added: There is a place by me, and thou shall stand upon a rock and it shall come to pass, while my glory passed by, that I will put thee in a cliff of the rock, and will cover thee, with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shall see my back parts; but my face shall not be seen. (Dillard 207)
From this extract it seems as if God was omnipresent, as if he was always taking control over everything and it is only up to people how they would react and explain natural features to
themselves. There are no doubts that God plays a very important role in Annie Dillard’s work and that she might be a little uncertain herself, if she really is ambivalent toward God. In fact, in her real life she was very unsure of her own religious views, since she was raised Presbyterian but converted to Catholicism in her early twenties. Annie Dillard claims that it really does not matter what kind of qualities your God has. But reading through her works, it is uneasy to decide, how she really feels toward him. God’s absence and God’s presence are felt simultaneously and it is very difficult to define whether she is afraid of him or she is simply aware of him. One of the possibilities of what she might think of God is that she is angry with him, even though she has never really expressed such an attitude in her writing. It is believed that God is an all knowing being, but no one has ever been in direct contact with him. And of course there is the question many people ask every single day: What exactly does he want us to do, so we do not have to go through any suffering and pain? God and his powers are the reasons for human fear and when we think again about the cruel nature we really have to admit that world is not a warm and loving place. To conclude, Annie Dillard says that every kind of writing is a sort of creation. It is true about any kind of creation and every single one is meant to bring joy. Every creation is meant to be touching and giving. Annie Dillard says that she writes to make people happy, she tries to make them see as she sees and see what she sees. God in her eyes is a mystic figure and his creation is the only one where she has doubts, whether it brought happiness and joy. But God touching human being in any kind of sense always brings hope. He is an inscrutable figure. It is most probable to her that there is a God, but the answer to a question if he cares about his creation is probably not. Human’s attitude towards God is very difficult. As Annie Dillard says it is extraordinarily difficult to be able to believe. Hope is a lot easier.
One of the most famous quotes by Annie Dillard is accurate to her feelings toward God and his impact on a reader. Annie Dillard said: “Eskimo: ‘If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?’ Priest: ‘No, not if you did not know’. Eskimo: ‘Then why did you tell me?’”
Works cited
Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. 1973. Rpt. New York: Harper Collins
Johnson, Jone L. Annie Dillard Quotes. URL:
Bibliography
Primary sources:
Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. 1973. Rpt. New York: Harper Collins Dillard, Annie. For the Time Being. Knopf: 1999
Secondary sources:
Mitchell M. Harris. Masterplots II: Christian Literature. Salem Press, 2008. Ronda, Bruce A. Annie Dillard and The Fire of God. Christian Century New York: 1983