Ben Philabaum

Dr. Murphy

4/24/2008

ENG 112

Water as a Metaphor in An American Childhood

From the first page of Annie Dillard’s memoir An American

Childhood to the last, metaphors pertaining to water are splashed

throughout. She establishes the relevance of water in her life on the

first page, when she describes the topographical layout of the river’s

surrounding her hometown of Pittsburgh, and how the Allegheny and

the Monongahela meet to form a plot of land that houses the city.

Dillard then writes about her father’s obsession with Mark Twain’s

memoir Life on the Mississippi. He had more than a dozen copies of

the book and read it many more. He became so engulfed by the story

that he set out on his own adventure and attempted to sail down the

Mississippi from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. Dillard’s own obsession

with the water came through a book, as well. A book called The Field

Book of Ponds and Streams description of “…how to mount slides, how

to label insects on their pins, and how to set up a freshwater aquarium

( Dillard 171)” , fascinated the young girl. But while her father was

more interested in navigating the waters to take him somewhere far

away, Dillard was more interested in analyzing droplets under a

microscope. The author uses water metaphors to portray her changing

attitude towards life, from doing something great with your life, to

simply enjoying it.

It is ironic to think that as her father was sailing down the

Mississippi, following in Twain’s wake, Dillard’s reading was giving her

life not just a change, but a turn to the water, as well. She started with

a drawing book that she began to follow with a strict regiment, waking

up at 8 a.m. on weekends and summer days to draw for hours. When

discussing her intense study of the mitt’s features, she discovers that,

“there will always be a new and finer layer of distinctions to draw out

and lay in (Dillard 171).” Here she reveals her philosophy towards

observation in not just drawing, but life. From there she says, “I began

by vanishing from the known world into the passive abyss of reading…

(Dillard 172).” Her turning from reality to books was curiously

reversed by her discovery of The Field Book of Ponds and Streams.

She was fascinated by the descriptions of the tiny insects and

organisms that could be found in the water and the instruments

necessary to make these findings. The book was so astonishing to

Dillard because she did not know of any ponds or streams to observe

the phenomena depicted on the pages and because she was curious to

experience them.

Eventually, Dillard could not just read about the things in the

book but had to see them for herself, so she got a microscope kit for
Christmas. She set up her lab in a corner of the basement and closely

analyzed the provided specimens under her microscope. Dillard’s

close examination of the water is a metaphor for her close examination

of life in general. Her observation of water can be paralleled to her

observation of the rest of the world. When one looks at water, they

simply see water, however, when one analyzes water closely, they will

discover particles, bacteria, maybe even the elusive amoeba. After

one sees this, they cannot go back to seeing water as water, but will

always have the thought of its components in the back of their mind.

Dillard expresses her thoughts towards her analysis when she says,

“How much noticing could I permit myself without driving myself round

the bend? Too much noticing and I was too self-conscious to live…

(Dillard 203)” She is searching for a balance of enjoying and

understanding life. Mark Twain makes a similar acknowledgement in

Life on the Mississippi. When discussing the relevance of stating the

date which a white man first laid eyes on the Mississippi River, Twain

says, “it is something like giving the dimensions of a sunset by

astronomical measurements, and cataloguing the colors by their

scientific names-as a result, you get the bald fact of the sunset, but

you don’t see the sunset (Twain 5).” It could be said that if one looks

at life to closely, they will miss it.

During her microscope phase, Dillard put a great importance on

doing something important with her life. She read the biographies of
George Washington Carver, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, and

Daniel Boone for guidance. She claims that “nothing exhilarated me

more than the idea of a life dedicated to a monumental worthwhile

task (Dillard 207).” She admires Doctor Salk, the man who produced a

vaccine for polio, which required him to work sixteen-hour days, six

days a week. Another water metaphor appears when she mentions his

sacrifice; “Doctor Salk never watched it rain and wished he had never

been born (Dillard 207).” When she says that he never watched it rain,

she is saying that he did not have the time to appreciate life. As

Dillard aged, she began to learn to get the most out of life instead of

working on one accomplishment and missing out on everything else.

Dillard’s most extensive use of water as a metaphor is when she

compares living to standing under a waterfall, “You leave the sleeping

shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, hold your breath,

choose your footing, and step into the waterfall (Dillard 198).” Her

description of the feeling of the water crashing down on her body,

serves as a way to express her appreciation for the world. She

includes this immediately following the passage about the microscope

to contrast the ways water, thus life, can be experienced. She can sit

in her basement and look for amoebas in festering water or she can

stand under the waterfall and feel how “The hard water pelts your

skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms (Dillard 198).” She is
realizing that working in a laboratory over a microscope for sixteen

hours a day is no way to live.

Since Dillard says that living is like standing under a waterfall,

perhaps life in general is like a river. Sometimes life moves slowly and

you coast along, but sometimes you go over a waterfall. Dillard is

saying that living takes place when you are at the waterfalls. The

transition from childhood to adolescence and the process of ‘waking

up’ can be applied to going over a waterfall.

Dillard uses water as a metaphor while writing about

consciousness converging with childhood when she writes, “Like any

child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection

in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists

slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly;

sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool,

and ever after (Dillard 136).” This beautiful imagery conveys the

sense that childhood is peaceful and without complication.

Her adolescence was quite the opposite. Instead of slipping into

her reflection, she says, “I was growing and thinning, as if pulled. I was

getting angry, as if pushed (Dillard 232).” She compares her emotions

around age sixteen to arising out of nowhere like waves, and

suppressing them “…was like trying to beat back the ocean (Dillard

232).” During all this emotional disorder, she had left behind her
microscope and close observations and filled them with getting the

most out of life before her time ran out. She is no longer playing with

the skin of her mother’s fingers or spending hours drawing the minute

details of her mitt, but is now engaging in drag races, smoking, driving,

and writing and reading furiously. Instead of focusing on remembering

everything, she wonders what she would do if she only had fifteen

minutes to live.

Like her father, Dillard’s reading “went to her head.” Like her

father, who had to live out Life on the Mississippi, Dillard was also

persuaded by The Field Book of Ponds and Streams to follow its path.

She turns from admiring people who dedicated themselves to

monumental tasks to people with a free spirit like Mark Twain, Jack

Kerouac, and most of all her father. She includes so many metaphors

relating to water in her memoir to describe how life can be

experienced and to illustrate the changing in ideals in her life from

childhood throughout adolescence.