3.4: Noticing Key Terms and Summarizing Important Quotes

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Within the list of quotations above are key terms and phrases that are critical to your understanding of the ideal life as Dillard describes it. For instance, “mindlessness,” “instinct,” “perfect freedom of a single necessity,” “stalk your calling,” “choice,” and “fierce and pointed will” are weighty terms and phrases, heavy with meaning, that you need to spend time understanding. You also need to understand the relationship between them and the quotations in which they appear. This is how you might work on each quotation to get a sense of its meaning and then come up with a statement that takes the key terms into account and expresses a general understanding of the text:

Quote 1: Animals (like the weasel) live in “necessity,” which
means that their only goal in life is to survive. They don’t
think about how they should live or what choices they should
make like humans do. According to Dillard, we like to have
options and resist the idea of “necessity.” We fight death—an
inevitable force that we have no control over—and yet ultimately
surrender to it as it is the necessary end of our lives.

Quote 2: Dillard thinks the weasel’s way of life is the best way
to live. It implies a pure and simple approach to life where we
do not worry about the passage of time or the approach of
death. Like the weasel, we should live life in the moment, intensely
experiencing everything but not dwelling on the past.
We should accept our condition, what we are “given,” with a
“fierce and pointed will.” Perhaps this means that we should
pursue our one goal, our one passion in life, with the same
single-minded determination and tenacity that we see in the
weasel.

Quote 3: As humans, we can choose any lifestyle we want.
The trick, however, is to go after our one goal, one passion like
a stalker would after a prey.

Quote 4: While we may think that the weasel (or any animal)
chooses to attack other animals, it is really only surrendering
to the one thing it knows: its need to live. Dillard tells us there
is “the perfect freedom” in this desire to survive because to

her, the lack of options (the animal has no other option than
to fight to survive) is the most liberating of all.

Quote 5: Dillard urges us to latch on to our deepest passion
in life (the “one necessity”) with the tenacity of a weasel and
not let go. Perhaps she’s telling us how important it is to have
an unwavering focus or goal in life.