Annie Dillard Ramblings Analysis

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The image of the “detailed and lifelike painting of a smiling clown’s head, made out of vegetables” (Dillard) evokes an unforgettable haunting that would journey with Dillard and me wherever we go. Although Annie Dillard’s disarranged ramblings are mentioned here and there, she is always able to relate back to them with a connection. The jumbled ramblings illustrate that the human thought process is not always consistently straightforward and directly logical to one’s mind. While trying to grasp the workings of the total eclipse, she compared how it did not make sense to food; “given a flashlight, a grapefruit, two oranges, and fifteen years, we still could not figure out” (Dillard). Near the end, Dillard relates the smiling vegetable clown

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