Rhetorical Précis
Annie Dillard, in her reflection of her mother, demonstrates the reactions of the general public to her mother’s antics, and those of her mother to these reactions. Annie flaunts the reactions of her mother as well as the people she comes in contact with by creating a caricature of her mother and the situations that she thrusts people into with her awkward and uncomfortable epigrams. Her purpose is to illustrate the character of her mother and how she thrived by pushing at others’ comfort zones. She adopts a reflective, almost admiring tone of her mother for the readers of her memoir.
Vocabulary Words
Capping—to complete
Locutions—a style of speech or verbal expression
Eschewed—avoided
Sashayed—to strut of flounce in a showy manner
Deadpan—showing no expression (like stoic)
Dictum—a saying or maxim
Torpid—inactive or dormant
Rhetorical Strategies
Cliché—“we said ‘tele pole,’ pronounced ‘telly pole,’ …the sidewalks are ‘slippy.’ And we said, as Pittsburghers do say, ‘this glass needs washed,’ or ‘the dog needs walked.’”
Stream-of-consciousness—“I was doomed. It was fatal to say ‘everyone says so.’ We all knew well what happened.”
Empathy—“anyone who met her verbal challenges she adored…this pat scenario bored her; she loved having it interrupted. It mush have galled her that her acquaintances were so predictably unalert…at any rate, she loved anyone who, as she put it, saw it coming, and called her on it.”
Questions
—Why did her mother feel the need to keep people on their toes?
—How does Annie Dillard emphasize her mother’s antics without the use of hyperbole?
—Do you agree with the mother’s view of people’s level of alertness?
Quotation
“During a family trip to the Highland Park Zoo, Mother and I were alone for a minute. She approached a young couple holding hands on a bench by the seals, and addresses the young man in dripping tones: ‘Where have you been? Still got those baby-blue eyes; always did slay me. And this’—a swift nod at the dumbstruck young woman, who had removed her hand from the man’s—‘must be the one you were telling me about. She’s not so bad, really, as you used to make her out. but listen, you know how I miss you, you know where to reach me, same old place. and there’s Ann over there—see how she’s grown? See the blue eyes?’
and off she sashayed, taking me firmly by the hand, and leading us around briskly past the monkey house and away. She cocked an ear back, and both of us heard the desperate man begin, in a high-pitched wail, “I swear, I never saw her before in my life…’”
