Analysis Of Annie Dillard's Teaching A Stone To Talk

Throughout her stories in “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” Dillard uses juxtapositions, analogies and imagery to demonstrate the raw beauty of the natural world and humans’ lack of awareness of it. Nature, as explained by the author, refers to the natural, physical world, and life that is lived by necessity rather than choice. The word nature itself is derived from the Latin form, natura, which means "essential qualities and innate disposition." A general concept is that all things, biotic or abiotic, are a part of nature, yet Dillard defines the natural world as all, that which is unaltered by human interference. Dillard acknowledges humans as members of the natural world, but makes a clear effort to differentiate actual nature from the artificialness …show more content…
Dillard states that she “wanted to learn, or remember, how to live.” Although she does not believe she could learn how to live by acting like a wild animal, Dillard finds a sense of purity in the way the weasel lives “in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive.” In this essay, there is a distinct contrast between how wild animals and humans live in a sense that, a weasel lives life out of necessity, in a manner that is unconscious of time, death, memory and choice, unlike humans who can only live through conscious choice. Dillard admires how the weasel is “obedient to his instinct” and “live(s) as he’s meant to.” Though the author acknowledges that if humans chose to live like weasels, life would be ridiculous, she wishes that humans would “choose to live as the weasel with necessity.” By this the author means that humans’ lives are hindered by their own choices and their hesitation to truly live due to bias and lack of self-confidence, but if humans can choose to follow the “stubbornness” of the weasel, they will be able to follow “[their] calling in a certain skilled and supple