To Thy Self be True

Reflective Essay C

Interpreting Annie Dillard’s essay “Total Eclipse” was very challenging. I actually struggled to understand her main idea. “Total Eclipse” can take the reader in so many directions that it could be confusing. Therefore, it is my conclusion that “Total Eclipse” focuses on language, communication, expression and how to link ideas and thoughts to the reader. Dillard’s essay was able to draw in the reader though personal experience that produced emotion. Her essay was abstract, purposeful, and strong (“Express Yourself” pg.1). My first draft didn’t have a specific purpose so it was better to start all over. The original draft went into so many directions it appeared much like Dillard’s essay. For a moment, I froze and was unsure what direction to go. I tried a few methods to help myself get out of that motionless position so I start reading my peers blog. Doing so really got me confused because everyone had his or her own take on Dillard’s essay. At this point, time is moving, which is something I didn’t have much of because English 101: Introduction to College Writing is an eight-week summer writing class. I sit quietly to rethink “I look deep, to understand, what is it, I’m to learn. I ask myself, what is it, what is the lesson? Looking and looking, what am I to see” (“Growing into Myself” 1). All of Sudden, I realize, “I have grown up and out of ignorance and no change. “We have so mastered the transition we have forgotten we ever learned. Yet, it is a transition we make a hundred times a day, as, like so many will-less dolphins, we plunge and surface, lapse and emerges. We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall. Useless, I say. Valueless, I might add – until someone hauls their wealth up to the surface and into the wide-awake city, in a form that people can use” (Dillard 168). Now it is time to change myself and to walk me, to talk me and be me” (“Growing into Myself” 1). Rather than being fake it is so easy to be “Me”: the real McCoy.

My interpretation of “Total Eclipse” focuses on language. It includes any system of formalized symbols, signs, sounds, gestures, or the like used or conceived as a means of communicating thought, emotion, etc. Language can include songs from rap singers like LiL Wayne; essays written by various authors such as James Baldwin or California J. Cooper; or plays from Shakespeare. While all of these authors have their own specific form of expression, yet they all deliver a message. Therefore, expression, communication, and language are vital skill that helps enhance society. “The most important purpose is how to communicate those experiences to others, which mean conveying expression through language” (“Express Yourself” 1). I realize that many people in society will not or can not, except difference. “…opens the door to societal intolerance of difference. The way we talk, the way we look, or the cultural difference that makes ethnicity special” ("Life Expressions" 1).