Analysis Of Annie Dillard's Living Like Weasels

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Weasels are vicious and wild animals who follow only their instinct and nothing else. When they attack, they are known to bite and never let go, even if they die holding on. So why are they so significant? Although the Annie Dillard’s title of the text, "Living Like Weasels" may seem like an odd idea, she encourages us to live in simplicity and and pursue our purpose like a weasel. How could we possibly live like such a wild animal?

Dillard explains that in order to live like a weasel, we must live on a simpler level.

Before that idea is explained, we must first understand how we could learn from this animal. Even the author herself had doubts, saying, "I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular" (14). She explains …show more content…
She explains that the act of going after our purpose is, “yielding not fighting” (16), however before she says that she encourages us to stalk and plug into our purpose. What does she mean by yielding? Yielding, according to Dictionary.com, is defined as inclined to give in; submissive; compliant. She relates it to weasels by saying they, “yield[ing] at

every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity” (16), which also ties in with her point of living by necessity vs choice. So to yield to our purpose means to be submissive to it and follow it like a weasel. The other question is, what does she mean by not fighting? Isn’t a weasel aggressive? Dillard makes a point, saying that, “A weasel doesn’t attack anything; a weasel lives as he’s meant to” (16). She’s implying that if we’re following our purpose, we’re not fighting for it, we’re simply living as we’re meant to.Then in the last paragraph she really drives home the idea of following our purpose like a weasel. She does this by relating it to the two stories that she told at the start of the text. One was about how a man bitten by a weasel and the only way to get it off by putting it in the nearest lake. The other one was about a weasel who was attacked by an eagle and fought back but lost. When the eagle was shot down it had the weasel’s skull still attached to it. She states to, “grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you” (17), and to, “let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter” (17). She encourages us to grasp our purpose with the intensity of a weasel and never let go, even if it kills us. Like Gary Leffew, the famous bull rider said, “You become a success from the attitude and the work you put in”. In order live like a weasel, we must yield to our purpose but to also put in the work to hold onto
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