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September 30, 2005
Seeing Assignment: First Draft
When, in her essay “Seeing,” Annie Dillard writes “But I don’t see what the specialist sees, and so I cut myself off, not only from the total picture, but from the various forms of happiness,” she is exploring how we both construct and deconstruct what we see.
Dillard is using metaphor to heighten our awareness of sight by comparing it to the way a specialist is trained by years of study and intense interest to pick out specific and detailed elements that others might never even realize exist or contain information worth examining and mounting. These are processes that would take hours of one’s time and certainly great expertise. Through this metaphor she alludes to the complexity of the things we often dismiss as mundane – a drop of water, clouds or stones. The author also, by using the idea of a specialist, plays on the idea of naïvety. Often as children we know full well our ability to construct from anything an absorbing and complex study, we are, it seems, far more aware of the innate possibility contained in every penny. Dillard pointed to this when she illustrates her childhood love of placing pennies on the sidewalk, believing them treasures that fortunate passersby would discover.
The author goes on in the quotation to use herself as a reference for the way as adults we learn to both construct and deconstruct what we see differently, as the author points out earlier in the essay, “who gets excited by a mere penny?” As adults, we separate ourselves from this naïve and visceral experience of the world; in doing so Dillard sees us as cutting ourselves off from experiencing fully the whole of life and any one part of it. She goes further to say that in doing this we numb ourselves to the awe, wonder and ultimately the joy these discoveries and explorations hold.
I believe the author is pointing to the change in visual culture over our life span and is seeking to rebirth in the reader the sense of wonder with the world. A rebirth that would lead to a desire to seek out, by making oneself open and present, in person and spirit, the experiences of the world around one.
~ Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at September 30, 2005 08:36 AM
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