Dying of Fright

In the essay Total Eclipse, Annie Dillard writes about watching the moon cast a shadow over the sun. This passage caught my attention because she talks about what it looked like and what she felt when the moon had covered the sun. I liked how Dillard describes what she was thinking while watching, and how she compares it to a different time period. Comparing herself to Emperor Louis and how differently they reacted was interesting and drew the reader even closer to the essay. I also like how she took many familiar items that we see everyday, and was able to describe them in ways that the readers have never seen before and make the period unfamiliar. I did not like how Dillard had compared the moon and sun to a dragon. I thought that this was out of context and made the reader a little bit confused. I think that by writing this passage, Dillard was trying to convey to the audience that this moment was not like any other she had ever experienced. This makes the passage fit into the whole story line because she had described how she

felt and how it was different from a normal everyday.