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Deer at Providence

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Deer at Providence
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Annie Dillard is a renowned essayist; having won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize of 1975 and written a number of books such as Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982), An American Childhood (1987), The Writing Life (1989) among others. In this article, The Deer of Providence, she comes out as a great writer and a lover of nature, who seeks the mysteries and excitement that come upon interaction with new natural environments (Dillard, ). We can be able to gather the main purpose of Annie’s as being the fact that suffering is a natural phenomenon hence people shouldn’t wonder why it has happened but should cope and move on; because its nature. According to the article, Annie is the youngest of four travellers from North America and the only woman in the group. They camp at a small village called Providence in the Amazon jungle and witness a shocking occurrence involving a deer which had been captured by the village dogs. The deer had developed injuries on its thin neck as it struggles to free itself from the rope now tying three of its hooves. They later had a sumptuous meal of well-prepared fish and a previously caught deer with rice and some bananas as well. As they headed to their tents for a goodnight sleep, it becomes apparent that the men had been astonished by Annie’s ability to look at the struggling deer at Providence without the feeling of remorse. Annie remembers her bathroom picture, at home, of a man who had burnt his face off for the second time in his life. This is where Annie’s main theme is revealed; Pain and suffering has got little or nothing to do with an individual, human or just a deer; it’s simply nature (Dillard, 1945). To support her thesis of pain and suffering being part of nature, Annie Dillard uses the illustration of the Deer of providence’s struggle and the burnt man in a newspaper article; a Mr.



References: Dillard, A. (1945). The Deer at Providence. The Deer at Providence, pp. 1-5. Orwell, G. (1953). Shooting an elephant: and other essays. london: Secker and Warburg.

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