Total Eclipse

“Two years have passed since the total eclipse of which I write. During those years I have forgotten, I assume, a great many things I wanted to remember—but I have not forgotten that clown print or its lunatic setting in the old hotel.”

This quote establishes temporal distance, highlighting the lasting impression of the eclipse experience while simultaneously highlighting the fallibility and selectivity of human memory. The unpredictability of memory is underscored by the juxtaposition of the total eclipse with the seemingly trivial clown print. By describing the hotel as a “lunatic setting,” Dillard’s diction evokes a sense of oddity and displacement. She emphasizes the surreal and otherworldly nature of the eclipse itself and the way memory often attaches significance to details within profound experiences—in this case, the hotel decor.

“As we lost altitude, the snows disappeared; our ears popped; the trees changed, and in the trees were strange birds. I watched the landscape innocently, like a fool, like a diver in the rapture of the deep who plays on the bottom while his air runs out.”

Dillard again employs the motif of depth and descent to highlight the rapid sensory and environmental transformations she experiences as she and her husband enter Yakima Valley via the Cascade Mountains, foreshadowing and emulating the disorienting effects of the eclipse on her perception. Dillard juxtaposes innocence and danger with the simile “like a fool, like a diver in the rapture of the deep,” highlighting her sense of being both captivated by the beauty of the experience and simultaneously, perhaps unwittingly, vulnerable to its overwhelming force.

“It looked as though we had all gathered on hilltops to pray for the world on its last day. It looked as though we had all crawled out of spaceships and were preparing to assault the valley below. It looked as though we were scattered on hilltops at dawn to sacrifice virgins, make rain, set stone sealed in a ring. There was no place out of the wind. The straw grasses banged our legs.”

The imagery in this quote is evocative of ancient rituals and practices, suggesting a primal, instinctive human need to find meaning, connection, and ritual in the face of massive cosmic happenings. The concluding observation, “There was no place out of the wind. The straw grasses banged our legs,” grounds the descriptions in tactile, physical sensations, emphasizing the dichotomy between Dillard’s intangible experience of the eclipse and the tangible, immediate sensory reactions it invokes.

“It began with no ado. Odd that such a well-advertised public event should have no starting gun, no overture, no introductory speaker. I should have known right then that I was out of my depth. Without pause or preamble, silent as orbits, a piece of the sun went away.”

Dillard’s initial expectations of a grand, orchestrated onset for such a monumental event leave her surprised by its abrupt nature, compared to human-made spectacles. The “depth” motif appears again through Dillard’s admission that “[she] should have known right then that [she] was out of [her] depth,” emphasizing that she is embarking into unknown territory.

“The sky was navy blue. My hands were silver. All the distant hills’ grasses were fine-spun metal which the wind laid down. I was watching a faded color print of a movie filmed in the Middle Ages; I was standing in it, by some mistake. I was standing in a movie of hillside grasses filmed in the Middle Ages. I missed my own century, the people I knew, and the real light of day.”

Dillard uses color-based imagery to highlight the unusual and surreal nature of light and dark during the eclipse, which differs from “normal” darkness and disorients her. Her description evokes a dreamlike environment where even the familiar becomes strange. The analogy of observing “a faded color print of a movie filmed in the Middle Ages” juxtaposed with the sensation of mistakenly “standing in it” emphasizes Dillard’s sense of dislocation in time and space. These modifications highlight her sense of disconnection and longing, revealing the emotional impact of the celestial event and the human yearning for connection and familiarity amid the vastness of the cosmos.

“Abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky. In the night sky was a tiny ring of light. For the hole where the sun belongs is very small. Just a thin ring of light marked its place. There was no sound. The eyes dried, the arteries drained, the lungs hushed. There was no world. We were the world’s dead people rotating and orbiting around and around, embedded in the planet’s crust, while the earth rolled down.”

The imagery in “The eyes dried, the arteries drained, and the lungs hushed” conveys an apocalyptic sense of lifelessness and stillness. This suggests a temporary state of suspended existence or detachment from life. The declaration, “There was no world,” paired with the image of “being embedded in the planet’s crust,” evokes a sense of cosmic insignificance and transience. The eclipse reminds Dillard of humanity’s relative insignificance in the vastness of the universe and the ephemerality of life and perception.

“Seeing this black body was like seeing a mushroom cloud. The meaning of the sight overwhelmed its fascination. It obliterated meaning itself.”

Dillard’s comparison of the moon’s “black body” to “a mushroom cloud” evokes images of nuclear explosions, indicating not only the visual impact of the event but also hinting at its apocalyptic, world-altering implications. The comparison draws parallels between nature’s spectacles and the devastating creations of mankind. The mushroom cloud captures the tension between the initial, superficial appeal of the eclipse and its deeper implications, implying that the event’s significance transcends visual wonder and instead touches the very core of cognition and perception.

“The small ring of light was like these things—like a ridiculous lichen up in the sky, like a perfectly still explosion 4,200 light-years away: It was interesting, and lovely, and in witless motion, and it had nothing to do with anything.”

This quote emphasizes the paradoxical nature of the eclipse, which is both mundane, in the cosmic sense, and monumental, in the personal sense. Dillard finds its beauty both intimate and distant, familiar and alien. The assertion that the ring “had nothing to do with anything” encapsulates Dillard’s meditation on the eclipse’s detachment from human concerns and constructs, reiterating the broader theme of The Transience of Human Existence.

“We had all died in our boots on the hilltops of Yakima, and were alone in eternity. Empty space stoppered our eyes and mouths; we cared for nothing. We remembered our living days wrong. With great effort we recalled some sort of circular light in the sky, but only the outline.”

The imagery in this passage conveys a collective experience of timelessness and isolation, encapsulating the transcendence of the eclipse, as it momentarily detaches observers from the continuum of life, plunging them into a shared liminality. This quotation demonstrates how Dillard uses physical imagery to depict the sensory and emotional void the eclipse induces, highlighting the event’s capacity to temporarily suspend human concerns, emotions, and connections to the material world. The eclipse challenges and distorts even her most immediate memories, highlighting the fragility and malleability of human perception in the face of profound experiences.

“The deepest, and most terrifying, was this: I have said that I heard screams. (I have since read that screaming, with hysteria, is a common reaction even to expected total eclipses.) People on all the hillsides, including, I think, myself, screamed when the black body of the moon detached from the sky and rolled over the sun. But something else was happening at that same instant, and it was this, I believe, that made us scream.”

Dillard creates an anticipatory tone, focusing on the intensity of the emotion and the psychological impact of the eclipse. She juxtaposes the “common reaction” of “screaming, with hysteria” during eclipses with her personal experience, capturing the dichotomy of collective responses to natural spectacles and the innate, almost primal fear triggered by such events.

“This was the universe about which we had read so much and never before felt: the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds. How could anything moving so fast not crash, not veer from its orbit amok like a car out of control on a turn?”

Dillard’s description here employs imagery and metaphor to convey both the ordered precision and vastness and unpredictability of the universe. The contrast between “read so much” and “never before felt” suggests that certain truths about the cosmos can only be truly understood when felt personally and emotionally, rather than simply intellectually grasped.

“That this was as dark as night, and eerie as hell, an hour after dawn, apparently meant that in order to see to drive to work, people had to use their headlights. Four or five cars pulled off the road. The rest, though, in a line at least five miles long, drove on into town. The highway ran between hills; the people could not have seen any of the eclipsed sun at all. Yakima will have another total eclipse in 2086. Perhaps, in 2086, businesses will give their employees an hour off.”

Dillard contrasts the cosmic enormity of the event with the trivialities of everyday life, emphasizing the tension between the universe’s spectacles and human routine. Here, she offers criticism on humans’ tendency to prioritize norms and responsibilities over rare events as cars continue down the highway, seemingly oblivious to what unfolds in the sky above. She thus highlights The Contrast Between the Mundane and the Extraordinary. The speculative note at the end is both a subtle critique of society’s values and an optimistic hope for greater recognition and appreciation of natural phenomena—especially ones that are so rare and fleeting.

“At once the yellow light made the sky blue again; the black lid dissolved and vanished. The real world began there. I remember now: We all hurried away. We were born and bored at a stroke. We rushed down the hill; we found our car; we saw the other people streaming down the hillsides; we joined the highway traffic and drove away.”

Here, Dillard highlights the contrast between the surreal experience of the eclipse and tangible, everyday reality. She suggests that while profound events may temporarily alter perception, the pull of the “real world” remains unavoidable and inexorable. Dillard’s depiction of the collective haste in “We all hurried away” and the sentiment “We were born and bored at a stroke” shows how people can quickly transform from amazed to bored. This suggests that awe, like life, is fleeting.