The Chase Annie Dillard Summary

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56 CHAPTERS The Chase ANNIE DILLARD =» Pittsburgh native Annie Dillard has had a distinguished career. A prolific author of books, essays, literary criticism, and reflections on writing, she won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for her personal narrative, A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Dillard is an adjunct professor at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and a contributing editor for Harper's. The following selection is from her 1987 au-tobiography, An American Childhood. Preview. The thrill of the chase—that's what Dillard writes of in this autobiographical essay. It's the thrill that comes from putting everything you have into a physical activity and never giving up. Perhaps you know that thrill. If you are an athlete, you may have experienced it while racing for the finish…show more content…
THE STAGES OF LIFE: HOW DO WE GROW AND CHANGE? 59 19 We listened perfunctorily indeed, if we listened at all, for the chewing out was redundant, a mere formality, and beside the point. The point was that he had chased us passionately without giving up, and so he had caught us. Now he came down to earth. I wanted the glory to last forever. 20 But how could the glory have lasted forever? We could have run through every backyard in North America until we got to Panama. But when he trapped us at the lip of the Panama Canal, what precisely could he have done to prolong the drama of the chase and cap its glory? I brooded about this for the next few years. He could only have fried Mikey Fahey and me in boiling oil, say, or dismembered us piecemeal, or staked us to anthills. None of which I really wanted, and none of which any adult was likely to do, even in the spirit of fun. He could only chew us out there in the Panamanian jungle, after months or years of exalting pursuit. He could only begin, "You stupid kids," and continue in his ordinary Pittsburgh accent with his normal righteous anger and the usual common
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