Annie Dillard “The Chase”

In Annie Dillards autobiography The Chase, she emphasizes and uses great detail in her different committal to writing techniques to brace the scenes in the story feel more alive or realisticistic. The attention of detail can be seen with her intense use of transitions and active descriptions in the actual chase scene. Dillard also uses tone and language of the characters to make the story feel more like actual real time events. In the basic paragraph of The Chase, the narrator of the story a seven year old girl is informing the audience about the game of football.She says It was all or nothing (Dillard 121). Basically stating that in football you have got to give all of your effort and not hesitate at all if you want to make the play and stop the offense. This do or die attitude is reflected later in the story during the chase scene. It is also the climax of the story. Being that a bunch of kids ar together unsupervised, there is going to be some trouble. That is exactly what h appens closely. The children are all gathered during a winter snowy day making snowballs next to a street throwing them at passing cars. Its wide black door opened a man got out of it running. He didnt even close the car door. This kind of unexpected thrill we can all relate to. Dillard adds even more by putting in the little details that make the reader feel the anger of this man and the feeling of were caught by the children that we have all felt as a kid is described in that same quote. By using these details in the story the reader can put themselves into the shoes of the characters.Dillard uses lots of active descriptions that are very real throughout the chase scene. She uses actual street names like Edgerton Avenue, Lloyd Street, Willard and Lang. This use of actual real names of streets makes the story. The reader can almost get missed in the chase itself with Dillards use of rapid transitions like up, around, under, through, down some, across, smashed. After the chase i s over and the children are caught the reader feels tired