Annie Dillard, "The Wreck of Time: Taking Our Century's Measure"

Questions for Making Connections within the Reading:

1. "The Wreck of Time" is divided up into seven sections. What is each section about? How are they connected? Is there are argument that develops over the course of the seven sections? Are there themes that are repeated across the sections? What is it that Dillard would like her readers to see or understand when they've completed her essay?

2. In the third section of "The Wreck of Time," Dillard describes how a boat creates a standing wave. At the end of her description, she writes that watching such waves allowed her to "see time and how it works." How does time work? What does her vision of the standing wave have to do with the other images she provides in her essay?

3. When Dillard's essay first appeared in Harper's, it appeared with a series of images interspersed throughout the text. What images do you think would be appropriate for this essay? Bring to class an image or series of images that you feel illustrates or comments on the argument Dillard is making in "The Wreck of Time." Be prepared to discuss why the image you've selected is appropriate.

Questions for Writing:

1. In many ways, Annie Dillard's "The Wreck of Time" defies our common expectations about what a piece of writing should do: the essay has no clear thesis statement; it has no marked transitions between the paragraphs; it provides no obvious connection between its various subsections. Indeed, upon first reading Dillard's piece, one might be tempted to conclude that it's little more than the recitation of a series of unrelated statistics and the posing of a series of unanswered questions. What is the relationship between the way that Dillard has written this piece and what she has to say in the piece? What is it that Dillard wants us to think about while reading her essay?

2. "We who are here now make up about 6.8 percent of all people who have appeared to date," Dillard writes. "This is not a meaningful figure." "The Wreck of Time" is filled with statistics about world population, the size of the universe, natural and man-made disasters. Are any of these figures "meaningful"? Can such figures be invested with meaning?

Questions for Making Connections Between Readings:

1. At the end of "Does God Have a Future," Karen Armstrong asserts that, "Human beings cannot endure emptiness and desolation; they will fill the vacuum by creating a new focus of meaning." Does Annie Dillard do this? What philosophical, religious, or moral system emerges from the vision Dillard has provided in "The Wreck of Time"?

2. Given the argument that Dillard makes in "The Wreck of Time," does it make sense to pursue a project like cleaning up the Ganges River that Alexander Stille describes? Is Dillard's view of the natural world consonant with Mishra's? Will the notion of "the sacred" last into the next century or will it be replaced by science and information?

More Dillard assignments...