Essay about John James Audubon and Dillard

Both John James Audubon, the author of “Ornithological Biographies”, and Annie Dillard, the author of “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, offer a unique way of narrating their story with the feathered vertebrate. They each develop their own styles throughout the excerpts, so much so, one could easily tell which author was which. Dillard’s and Audubon’s stylistic writing fashions are so different; neither author crosses paths (with respect to the writers’ diction), except for when Audubon comments on marking a piece of paper for each bird that had flown overhead. In that tiny excerpt, he shares Dillard’s writing choices by giving an account for each bird. In the first passage, Audubon describes the birds as a group while Dillard, in the second passage, gives each bird a sense of individuality while still bringing to attention that each individual bird is not flying solo, but part of a symphony. For example, Dillard uses phrases such as “Each individual bird bobbed and knitted up and down in the flight at apparent random…” and “They gathered deep in the distance, flock sifting into flock, and strayed towards me…” It is almost as if she is painting a masterpiece, giving the gift of a third eye. In “Ornithological Biographies”, Audubon ventures a different way. He lacks Dillard’s superior attention to imagery, but amuses another sense simultaneously, hearing. In paragraph 2, he says “At once, like a torment, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass, pressing

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