Read aloud Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels” and discuss basic questions:
1. Why does Annie Dillard use the account about the weasel fixed by the jaws to the eagle’s throat? What does this suggest about a weasel’s life and what is Dillard trying to suggest about our lives, including her own?
2. Is it possible for humans to “live any way we want”? Can we live like the weasel? Or in what ways are we able to live like the weasel?
3. Analyze the author’s use of figurative language to achieve her purpose.
4. Any echoes of Thoreau’s “Where I Lived”? Students silently read Brian Doyle’s “Fishering” and annotate it.
In small groups, read Brian Doyle’s “The Greatest Nature Essay Ever.” As a group, determine the criteria/formula for successful nature writing according to Doyle’s essay and answer the following question, providing specific examples from the texts. Do you think that the organization of Dillard’s nature essay on weasels is similar to the organization of Doyle’s “Fishering”? Does it follow the formula from “The Greatest Nature Essay Ever”?
Thoreau: Where I Lived and What I Lived For
http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/CS/Walden.pdf
Annie Dillard's "Total Eclipse":
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/
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