AcDec Literature 2015 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Chapters

Book's intro; says that book's purpose is to be a meteorological journal of the mind; tomcat's bloody pawprints; waterbug sucks out frog; title refers to Quran; theodicy (how a good Good could allow cruelty in the world); Pascal's deus absconditus and Einstein's feeling the hem; negative capability is the ability to hold mutually contradictory ideas in one's head without accepting or denying or choosing (Keats); steer across the stream (anthropogenic, "Swedish meatballs!")

Penny-hiding childhood memory (arrow points toward hidden treasure); equates seeing with seeking (and Annie tries to see animals in nature but needs the help of children); kayak sickness and walk/dream with mysterious "black body"; von Senden's Space and Sight describes the experiences of the newly-sighted (tree with the lights in it=nature's grace; some people's brains can't process sight=square as lemonade)

Set in February; conscious human cruelty toward nature and nature's unconcern with said cruelty; starlings in Radford (introduced to US by Schieffelin); gory winter survival (Eskimo hunters and explorers; cutting off gulls frozen in ice and leaving their feet stuck there; long list of explorers); chases a coot and gets mad when she realizes the coot doesn't care; goldfish and only companion Ellery Channing named after Thoreau's walking partner William E. C.

because Dillard loves Thoreau

unconscious human cruelty toward nature; learning to see mantis egg cases and, later, more in nature; Thoreau describes a battle of ants; mantises hatch in a Mason jar and eat each other; Polyphemus moth hatches in Mason jar and is crippled/mutilated for life; moth is imagined walking down a driveway but then it reaches a waterfall (grace); moth is a "he" (personalizes it); caterpillars follow each other in line on the circular rim of a vase forever and eventually starve; mantis eats wasp eats bee eats honey; "the fixed" imprisons nature and humans; Mason jar symbolizes entrapment and wanton/meaningless destruction

Dillard tries to untie the knot in a snakeskin but it's not actually a knot and thus cannot be untied; symbol is Gordian knot which has no beginning or end (Alexander the Great cuts it with his sword); the seasons are compared to this knot; signals the arrival of spring; nature and people are sensitive to changing seasons; just like there is no knot in the snakeskin, there is no exact point when spring begins; this is the short chapter

"patting the puppy" at gas station in March is the key image; the puppy is unconsciously purely in the present; Dillard feels part of nature consciously until she realizes it (self-consciousness separates us from nature); innocence is living without self-consciousness, like kids; the present opens a door onto eternity; tree with the lights in it=grace; present is being emptied and hollow and catching grace like a cup under a waterfall; Xerxes sees sycamore and stops his army to look at it; Goethe's augenblick "present moment"; Deus absconditus; God is a hidden archer using invisibility as the all-time great cover

explores beauty and language; beauty is a kind of language that must be translated; birdsong is beautiful language but we don't know its purpose; Jean White's dead horse; young boy killing newts; it is important to explore the facts of creation even if they are not beautiful; Eskimo learns about God and asks preacher why he told him about God if he would have gone to heaven anyway without knowing

intricacy describes the endless details in nature; fringe on the hem of nature/God; chlorophyll (Mg) and hemoglobin (Fe) have similar structures; caterpillar muscles, leaf counts, and lots of insects are examples of nature's intricacy; "the creator loves pizzazz" means sheer variety in nature is evidence for the existence of God; like Romantics Dillard celebrates the individual irregularities around her; "Beauty itself is the fruit of the creator's exuberance"; newfound sight "scales are fallen from our eyes" is a reference to St. Paul; "Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery"; confusion over whether nature "came off" or how intricacy and cruelty can coexist; first chapter to follow via negativa instead of via positiva; tone grows more negative/horrific from here

chapter describes one complete coherent story for once; story is about Hurricane Agnes and the flood that ensued; Tinker Creek turns into a "violent dragon" and animals flee from it; cemetery in VA floods and bodies float down streets, which pilots compare to Vietnam; neighbors Bowerys with flooded house and Bings; Gov. Holton sees magical sight (one lightbulb remains lit despite the lack of all power); imagines a mushroom at the end

pairs with "Intricacy" but is more negative; extravagance is wasteful; life means inevitable death so spring's fertility means lots of death later; Dillard is horrified by just how many bugs and barnacles there are; plants are fundamentally different and "acres and acres of tulips" is fine but "acres and acres of rats" is horrible; nightmare about mating butterflies and a bed full of fish eggs; gooseneck barnacle is the ultimate example of survival in the face of so much death (Rachel Carson said that too); the problem is that humans care because nature sure doesn't; "We value the individual supremely; nature values him not a whit"

lighthearted; Dillard stalks "eye food" (just wants to see stuff, not eat it); fish, water striders, herons, and dragonflies, but mostly muskrats; muskrat is like an electron (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) and cannot be perfectly stalked; to stalk muskrats, Dillard must let go of self-consciousness; this reflects her change through the year

visit to nearby Lucas property and 1-room cottage; focus on landscape; simple cottage is an allusion to Thoreau's home; chapter references mystic St. John of the Cross and his poem "Dark Night of the Soul," which reformats spiritual crisis as spiritual awakening; silver eels migrate to the Sargasso Sea sometimes overland; influenced by Rachel Carson's Under the Sea Wing and Edwin Way Teale; lots of war words like barrage and legions; title refers to a sentry

key image is nibbling (everything in nature is nibbled, nothing is completely whole); lots of parasites nibbling and chomping the world, including the tree with the lights in it; title refers to Jewish sacrificial altar from Biblical times; horns placed on corners for grasping or covering in sacrificed blood; heave shoulder and wave breast; old and frayed world still has intricacy in the fringes but September is starting to fade

everything that migrates is preparing to do so (caterpillars, caribou, birds) for winter; now it's November; Monarch butterfly migration is key image and consumes 4 lifecycles; Dillard wants to go North, Nature wants to go South; Dillard wants to recapture the austerity and simplicity of winter, which comes south to meet her; recalls the Israelite wave breast which is a ram's breast waved around before being sacrificed to God as thanksgiving

last chapter is paired with the first; begins with Quran quote to "expend...the abundance" or simplify; Dillard walks around the creek one more time and recalls the motifs, anecdotes, and images from the previous chapters; these all come to a crescendo of questions: why are we here? Title refers to another Jewish tradition: those who come into contact with a dead body need to be purified; the book ends with an image of praise and silver trumpets even though the questions haven't really been answered