Summary Of Total Eclipse By Annie Dillard

In “Total Eclipse,” by Annie Dillard, Dillard contrasts the emerging ring of light around the sun to an old silver wedding band or a morsel of bone in order to juxtapose the different feelings the eclipse raises as well as portray the lasting impression the total eclipse had on people. A worn wedding band insinuates the notion of the eclipse’s beauty and excitement in suspense of it, just as a marriage; moreover, a marriage lasts forever much like the imprinting the eclipse leaves on people. Dillard, for example, become attached to it and recounts it as lingering in her memory forever; so much so that she could write about it two years later in exceptional detail. Dillard belies the wedding band with a morsel of a bone, which serves as a symbol
for the uneventful residue of the eclipse that nobody wants. Later in the essay, she writes of the spectators leaving as if nothing had happened as soon as totality ends. Diverging the two analogies displays the inner conflict humans face with everyday issues, magnified to the size of the sun, to the reader. Doing so keys the reader into the theme of “Total Eclipse” as a simile for the great shipwreck that is life and the sharp contrasts involved in it.