Claim: Dillard re-creates the French and Indian War in her mind to escape from the everyday blandness

of everyday life.

Cite: “The French and Indian War was a war of which I, for one, reading stretched out in the bedroom,
couldn’t get enough.”… “How Witless in comparison were the clumsy wars of Europe: on this open field
at nine o’clock sharp, Soldiers in heavy armor, dragged from their turnip patches in feudal obedience to
Lord So-and-So, met in long ranks the heavily armored men owned or paid for by Lord So-and-so, and
defeated them by knocking them over like ninepins.” (Dillard 118)

Claim: One can presume that Annie reaches for something above society for the time: she reads and
interprets the French and Indian war as an exciting, different event than the bland, reiterating life of a
citizen of the time.

Devices: Simile, Polysyndeton,

So what: Simile shows how soldiers were being killed one by one so easily by a nameless wealthy Earl

The Polysyndeton emphasizes how Annie was so absorbed by the French and Indian War. She attempts
to show with every detail presenting after this sentence, she shows her interest in the war vividly with
the sentences following the statement.

Claim: Annie imagines a painting as more than a painting, she compares the painting to a sea and can be
seen as society as the waves never reaching its peak.

Cite: According to Dillard, “*It was a painting, not a drawing; it had no lines, only forms awash*, which
rose faintly from the plaster and deepened slowly and dramatically as I watched the seas climbed and
the wind rose before anyone could furl the sails. *Those distant dashes over the water-were they men
sliding overboard? Where they storm petrels flying? I knew a song whose chorus asked, What did the
deep sea say*? (Dillard 126)”

Comment: It can be seen through Dillard’s use of polysyndetons and rhetorical questioning that she
wishes to portray this painting as a comparison to society: will men ever reach their full potential, or are
they falling and sinking down?

Rhetorical devices: Polysyndetons, rhetorical questions

So what: The polysendatons put the emphasis that Annie doesn’t see the painting as a painting but as a
sea. Her constant usage of commas, creates an affect to show the picture as “alive” and 3D

The rhetorical questions make the reading ponder upon the imaginary figures in the painting: being men
in society; as either rising or falling in society.