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Borough of Manhattan Community College

FOCUS

A Discussion of How The Way We See the World Depends on What We Focus On

Text: “Seeing” By Annie Dillard

Questions, Writing Assignment, and Sample Paper by Andrew GottliebThe Writing Assignment is on page of this handout.

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Write about the following question:How does what we focus on affect the way we see the world?

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“Seeing” By Annie Dillard

I used to be able to see flying insects in the air. I’d look ahead and see, not the row of hemlocks across the road, but the air in front of it. My eyes would focus along that column of air, picking out flying insects. But I lost interest, I guess, for I dropped the habit. Now I can see birds. Probably some people can look at the grass at their feet and discover all the crawling creatures. I would like to know grasses and sedges—and care.

What is the main idea of this passage? Consider the word focus in your answer.

Then my least journey into the world would be a field trip, a series of happy recognitions. Thoreau, in an expansive mood, exulted, “What a rich book might be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts!” It would be nice to think so. I cherish mental images I have of three perfectly happy people. One collects stones. Another—an Englishman, say—watches clouds. The third lives on a coast and collects drops of seawater, which he examines microscopically and mounts. But I don’t see what the specialist sees, and so I cut myself off, not only from the total picture, but from the various forms of happiness. Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven; the brightest oriole fades into leaves. These disappearances stun me into stillness and concentration; they say of nature that it conceals with a grand nonchalance, and they say of vision that it is a deliberate gift, the revelation of a dancer who for my eyes only flings away her seven veils.

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What is the significance of Dillard’s account of the three perfectly happy people?

It’s all a matter of keeping my eyes open. Nature is like one of those line drawings of a tree that are puzzles for children: Can you find hidden in the leaves a duck, a house, a boy, a bucket, a zebra, and a boot? Specialists can find the most incredibly well-hidden things. A book I read when I was young recommended an easy way to find caterpillars to rear: you simply find some fresh caterpillar droppings, look up, and there’s your caterpillar. More recently an author advised me to set my mind at ease about those piles of cut stems on the ground in grassy fields. Field mice make them; they cut the grass down by degrees to reach the seeds at the head. It seems that when the grass is tightly packed, as in a field of ripe grain, the blade won’t topple at a single cut through the stem; instead, the cut stem simply drops vertically, held in the crush of grain. The mouse severs the bottom again and again, the stem keeps dropping an inch at a time, and finally the head is low enough for the mouse to reach the seeds. Meanwhile, the mouse is positively littering the field with its little piles of cut stems into which, presumably, the author of the book is constantly stumbling.

What is meaning of keeping your eyes open?

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If I can’t see these minutiae, I still try to keep my eyes open. I’m always on the lookout for antlion traps in sandy soil, monarch pupae near milkweed, skipper larvae in locust leaves. These things are utterly common, and I’ve not seen one. I bang on hollow trees near water, but so far no flying squirrels have appeared. In flat country I watch every sunset in hopes of seeing the green ray. The green ray is a seldom-seen streak of light that rises from the sun like a spurting fountain at the moment of sunset; it throbs into the sky for two seconds and disappears. One more reason to keep my eyes open. A photography professor at the University of Florida just happened to see a bird die in midnight; it jerked, died, dropped, and smashed on the ground. I squint at the wind because I read Stewart Edward White: “I have always maintained that if you looked closely enough you could see the wind—the dim, hardly-made-out, fine debris fleeing high in the air.” White was an excellent observer, and devoted an entire chapter of The Mountains to the subject of seeing deer: “As soon as you can forget the naturally obvious and construct an artificial obvious, then you too will see deer.”

What do you think White means by an “artificial obvious” and how would this enable you to see deer?

But the artificial obvious is hard to see. My eyes account for less than one percent of the weight of my head; I’m bony and dense; I see what I expect. I once spent a full three minutes looking at a bullfrog that was so unexpectedly large I couldn’t see it even though a dozen enthusiastic campers were shouting directions. Finally I asked, “What color am I looking for?” and a fellow said, “Green.” When at last I picked out the frog, I saw what painters are up against: the thing wasn’t green at all, but the color of wet hickory bark.

What is Dillard’s comment, “I see what I expect?” How do our expectations interfere with our ability to be good observers? Another way to think of this is that our concepts block our perceptions. Can you think of examples of this?

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Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simple won’t see it. It is, as Ruskin says, “not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen.” My eyes alone can’t solve analogy tests using figures, the ones which show, with increasing elaborations, a big square, then a small square in a big square, then a big triangle, and expect me to find a small triangle in a big triangle. I have to say the words, describe what I’m seeing. If Tinker Mountain erupted, I’d be likely to notice. But if I want to notice the lesser cataclysms of valley life, I have to maintain in my head a running description of the present. It’s not that I’m observant; it’s just that I talk too much. Otherwise, especially in a strange place, I’ll never know what’s happening. Like a blind man at the ball game, I need a radio.

a. What, according to Dillard, is the relationship between seeing and verbalization? Do we need to describe something to be aware of it?

b. Dillard writes, “Like a blind man at the ball game, I need a radio.” What does this analogy mean?

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When I see this way I analyze and pry. I hurl over logs and roll away stones; I study the bank a square foot at a time, probing and tilting my head. Some days when a mist covers the mountains, when the muskrats won’t show and the microscope’s mirror shatters, I want to climb up the blank blue dome as a man would storm the inside of a circus tent, wildly, dangling, and with a steel knife claw a rent in the top, peep, and, if I must, fall.

But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer.

Which of the two ways of seeing mentioned in this passage would be used by a scientist?

It was sunny one evening last summer at Tinker Creek; the sun was low in the sky, upstream. I was sitting on the sycamore log bridge with the sunset at my back, watching the shiners the size of minnows who were feeding over the muddy sand in skittery schools. Again and again, one fish, then another, turned for a split second across the current and flash! The sun shot out from its silver side. I couldn’t watch for it. It was always just happening somewhere else, and it drew my vision just as it disappeared: flash, like a sudden dazzle of the thinnest blade, a sparking over a dun and olive ground at chance intervals from every direction. Then I noticed white specks, some sort of pale petals, small, floating from under my feet on the creek’s surface, very slow and steady. So I blurred my eyes and gazed towards the brim of my hat and saw a new world. I saw the pale white circles roll up, roll up, like the world’s tuning, mute and perfect, and I saw the linear flashes, gleaming silver, like stars being born at random down a rolling scroll of time. Something broke and something opened. I filled up like a new wineskin. I breathed an air like light; I saw a light like water. I was the lip of a fountain the creek filled forever; I was ether, the leaf in the zephyr; I was flesh-flake, feather, bone.

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Based on Dillard’s experience, what can we conclude about how our perceptions affect the way we feel? Can you recall an experience similar to the one described by Dillard in this passage?

When I see this way I see truly. As Thoreau says, I return to my senses. I am the man who watches the baseball game in silence in an empty stadium. I see the game purely; I’m abstracted and dazed. When it’s all over and the white-suited players lope off the green field to their shadowed dugouts, I leap to my feet; I cheer and cheer.

a. What does it mean to return to your senses?

b. What is the meaning of Dillard’s analogy of watching a baseball game in an empty stadium?

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But I can’t go out and try to see this way. I’ll fail, I’ll go mad. All I can do is try to gag the commentator, to hush the noise of useless interior babble that keeps me from seeing just as surely as a newspaper dangled before my eyes. The effort is really a discipline requiring a lifetime of dedicated struggle; it makes the literature of saints and monks of every order East and West, under every rule and no rule, discalced and shod. The world’s spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind’s muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness. Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects act and rest purely, without utterance. “Launch into the deep,” says Jacques Ellul, “and you shall see.”

What does it mean to “gag the commentator,” “hush the noise of the useless interior babble.” What is the “muddy river?” What does it take to become a good observer?

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Writing Assignment:

Write about the following question: How does what we focus on affect the way we see the world? Make references to Anne Dillard’s essay “Seeing” along with along with whatever insights you have gained from your own experiences and observations. Also, explain the meaning of the title and the fish story.

The paper must be 4 double-spaced pages and satisfy all of the specifications and formatting requirements on the following pages of this handout to receive credit.******************************************************************************

Topic: Seeing.

Thesis: Seeing is about lifting the blinders, going beyond the limits of expectation, and focusing on something other than our own ongoing internal monologue.

All arguments in the essay will be evaluated in part as to the degree that they are thesis-centered, meaning that the instructor will grade papers in part on the basis of how well the arguments support the thesis statement. Other considerations will be coherence, organization, and general proficiency with the language which includes the ability to write grammatically correct sentences.

Essay Outline:

Introduction:

Body:Summary and Interpretation of “Seeing.”

Conclusion:Reconsider the ideas raised in the introduction and add whatever insights you have gained from your discussion of Dillard’s essay.

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Key Lines from “Seeing” By Annie Dillard:

“I used to be able to see flying insects in the air. I’d look ahead and see, not the row of hemlocks across the road, but the air in front of it. My eyes would focus along that column of air, picking out flying insects” (Dillard, 1).

“I cherish mental images I have of three perfectly happy people. One collects stones. Another—an Englishman, say—watches clouds. The third lives on a coast and collects drops of seawater, which he examines microscopically and mounts. But I don’t see what the specialist sees, and so I cut myself off, not only from the total picture, but from the various forms of happiness” (Dillard, 1).

“It’s all a matter of keeping my eyes open. Nature is like one of those line drawings of a tree that are puzzles for children: Can you find hidden in the leaves a duck, a house, a boy, a bucket, a zebra, and a boot? Specialists can find the most incredibly well-hidden things” (Dillard, 1).

“I squint at the wind because I read Stewart Edward White: “I have always maintained that if you looked closely enough you could see the wind—the dim, hardly-made-out, fine debris fleeing high in the air.” White was an excellent observer, and devoted an entire chapter of The Mountains to the subject of seeing deer: “As soon as you can forget the naturally obvious and construct an artificial obvious, then you too will see deer” (Dillard, 2).

“My eyes account for less than one percent of the weight of my head; I’m bony and dense; I see what I expect” (Dillard, 2).

“Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization….It’s not that I’m observant; it’s just that I talk too much. Otherwise, especially in a strange place, I’ll never know what’s happening. Like a blind man at the ball game, I need a radio” (Dillard, 2).

“But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer” (Dillard, 2).

“When I see this way I see truly. As Thoreau says, I return to my senses. I am the man who watches the baseball game in silence in an empty stadium. I see the game purely; I’m abstracted and dazed. When it’s all over and the white-suited players lope off the green field to their shadowed dugouts, I leap to my feet; I cheer and cheer” (Dillard, 3).

“But I can’t go out and try to see this way. I’ll fail, I’ll go mad. All I can do is try to gag the commentator, to hush the noise of useless interior babble that keeps me from seeing just as

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surely as a newspaper dangled before my eyes. The effort is really a discipline requiring a lifetime of dedicated struggle; it makes the literature of saints and monks of every order East and West, under every rule and no rule, discalced and shod. The world’s spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind’s muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness. Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects act and rest purely, without utterance. “Launch into the deep,” says Jacques Ellul, “and you shall see” (Dillard, 3).

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Specifications

1. Each essay must be stapled in the upper left-hand corner. Papers that are not stapled will not be accepted.

2. Each page of each essay must have typed page numbers in the upper right-hand corner. Papers without typed page numbers in the upper right hand corner will not be accepted.

3. Each essay must be typed. Essays that are not typed will not be accepted.

4. Font size must be 12.

5. Font style must be Times New Roman.

6. Each paragraph must be indented.

7. There must be no more than one double-space between paragraphs.

8. The name of the student, professor, course, and date must be flush left with a double-space between each. See example on the following page.

9. Each essay must be double-spaced.

10. For citations more than one sentences, use the following specifications. See example on page 9.

a. single-spaceb. font size 10c. left indent at 1 right indent at 5.5.

11. Quotation marks and the appropriate MLA citation for all quotes must be used. The absence of quotation marks where needed is PLAGIARISM. See example of internal punctuation on the following page. WARNING: Omission of quotation marks is grounds for an F for the paper and possibly for the final grade.

12. All sources used in the essay must be cited in a “Works Cited” page and be done according to MLA formats. See example on the page after the following page.

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FormatFirst Page This is an example of the top of the first page of a paper. Use double-spaces. The title must be a double-space below the date and centered. See MLA Handbook - Seventh Edition. 4.3. Heading And Title. 116.

Internal Punctuation

Long QuotationsThis is an example of how to do a citation longer than one sentence.

ksfsdfsalsfdjkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkks;dflkaks;fldskf;sdlllllllllllllllllwks;dlfk’safdksa;

Works Cited Page

This is an example of the top of the first page of a works-cited list.

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John Smith

Professor Abraham

English 201

May 7, 2009

Greek Tragedy

“In the very first year of our century Sigmund Freud in his Interpretation of Dreams offered a famous and influential interpretation of Oedipus the King:

Oedipus Rex is what is known as a tragedy of destiny. Its tragic effect is said to lie in the contrast between supreme will of the gods and the vain attempts of mankind to escape the evil that threatens them. The lesson which, it is said, the deeply moved spectator should learn from the tragedy is submission to the divine will and realization of his own impotence. (Trans. James Strachey)

This passage is of course a landmark in the history of modern thought, and it is fascinating to observe that this idea, which, valid or not, has had enormous influence, stems from an attempt to answer a literary problem – why does the play have this overpowering effect on modern audiences?” (Knox, Bernard. Sophocles – The Three Theban Plays. Translated by Robert Fagles. Penguin Books. Copyright by Bernhard Knox, 1982. 132. Print.)

When citing a source in the text do as follows: “Oedipus in the play is a free agent” (Fagles, 149).

When paraphrasing do as follows: Fagles maintains that Oedipus has free will (Fagles, 149).

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Entries are in alphabetical order with second lines of each entry indented (hanging indentation).See MLA Handbook - Seventh Edition. 131.

The Works Cited page must be on a separate page.

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Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark. Edited by Edward Hubler.

A Signet Classic. Copyright by Edward Hubler, 1963. Print.

Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays – Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oeidipus at Colonus.

Translated By Robert Fagles. Penguin Books. Copyright by Robert Fagles, 1982, 1984. Print.

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Andrew Gottlieb SAMPLE PAPER for Dillard’s “Seeing”

English 101- (section number)

Professor Gottlieb

May 10, 2014

Focus

Introduction:

Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher is known for having said that you can’t put your foot

in the same river twice. The current is in constant motion, and as Heraclitus says “Everything

is in flux.” Our thought and our feelings are far from constant. By and large, we are unstable.

The volatility of our consciousness is due in large part to what we choose to focus on. I once

heard a story about a man in a concentration camp who was able to find beauty in the fish head

that was bobbing about in the water that passed for soup. The man made a choice to “see”

beauty in what most of us would find horrible. Cognitive therapy maintains that we can alter the

way we feel by changing the way we think. It is our expectations that set us up either to feel

good or bad. If I expect to be surrounded by family and friends and am not, I will feel sad and

disappointed. It may not be the absence of the people that is upsetting me so much as my

expectation that this is what life is supposed to be. Our expectations are like filters by means of

which we evaluate ourselves and others and it is our expectations, as such, that can act as

blinders. Seeing is about lifting the blinders, going beyond the limits of expectation, and

focusing on something other than our own ongoing internal monologue. This is a challenge

we all face. Learning to be a good observer, to focus on whatever fascinating phenomena

surrounds us is an art. In her essay “Seeing,” Anne Dillard articulates this challenge by

providing her readers with a variety of images.

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Body:

At the outset of her essay Dillard writes about how her “eyes would focus along that

column of air, picking out flying insects” (Dillard, 1). The key words here are focus and picking.

What we see is what we focus on and what we focus on is a choice. We see what we select.

Seeing is thus an act of free will or possibly a function of who we are at a given time in our lives,

and since we and what we are interested in or care about may change over time, so too is our

way of seeing.

Dillard goes on to write about “three perfectly happy people” (Dillard, 1). One collects

stones. Another—an Englishman, say—watches clouds. The third lives on a coast and collects

drops of seawater, which he examines microscopically and mounts (Dillard, 1). Each of these

people has different interests and focuses on different things. It is significant that Dillard also

says “I don’t see what the specialist sees, and so I cut myself off, not only from the total picture,

but from the various forms of happiness” (Dillard, 1). The world is full of so many things, but

we only see or notice a fraction of them. “It all a matter of keeping my eyes open,” Dillard

continues (Dillard, 1). “Nature is like one of those line drawings of a tree that are puzzles for

children: Can you find hidden in the leaves a duck, a house, a boy, a bucket, a zebra, and a

boot?” (Dillard, 1). In this respect, seeing is noticing, and we notice different things at different

times. If a specialist sees what I do not it is because he has cultivated a special interest in certain

things. Seeing, in this respect, is a learned faculty. We can be trained to see what others do not.

One of the most compelling ideas in Dillard’s essays comes from Steward Edward White

who maintains that “As soon as you can forget the naturally obvious and construct an artificial

obvious, then you too will see deer” (Dillard, 2 – my italics). What is naturally obvious is what

is obvious to all of us. What is artificially obvious is what becomes obvious to the specialist,

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the trained observer. We need not, however be specialists to construct an artificial obvious.

We simply need to adopt a more attentive attitude toward our surroundings. In this respect,

we can all learn to specialize, or rather to become better observers.

What prevents us from seeing more than we do, in part, is our expectations. “My eyes

account for less than one percent of the weight of my head,” writes Dillard. “I’m bony and

dense; I see what I expect” (Dillard, 2). We become habituated to our environment to the extent

that we may fail to notice subtle changes in it. We may tend to see only what we need to see.

I have often noticed that people do not look up when there is an extraordinary sky. I say to

myself, “Don’t they see how beautiful it is?” Their eyes seem lifeless, their gaze fixed. Right in

front of them are the most glorious shades of blue, gold, and rose. Yet, they seem indifferent to

the spectacle. I have seen such people on elevated subway platforms and on the streets of

Manhattan. In Central Park, however, which is a place designated for recreation, people are

more relaxed and attentive. They are not immersed in the hustle-bustle of city life. It is thus

what we are doing and where we are going that can also influence the way we see.

Dillard continues her discussion by affirming that seeing is “very much a matter of

verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simple won’t see it”

(Dillard, 2). Seeing can thus be thought of as an act involving conscious articulation.

Perception as such is contingent on conception. What we see or notice is what we tell ourselves

to see. Without some degree of verbalization we are, in essence, oblivious of our surroundings.

“Like a blind man at the ball game,” writes Dillard, “I need a radio” (Dillard, 2). The radio is

our own internal voice that directs our perceptions.

Dillard goes on to compare two kinds of seeing.

The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and

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the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer” (Dillard, 2).

Evidently, the kind of seeing used by a keen observer is selective. The specialist, the scientist,

and the artist choose to see what they see. They are not passive onlookers but active participants.

Seeing is thus not merely receiving. The eye may receive the signals, but it is the brain that

interprets them. The brain functions in part according to intention and so perception is, in this

respect, an act of will.

Ironically, this act of will is not about focusing on thought but rather pushing thought

aside. “All I can do,” explains Dillard, “is try to gag the commentator, to hush the noise of

useless interior babble that keeps me from seeing just as surely as a newspaper dangled before

my eyes” (Dillard, 3). Yet, you cannot willfully silence the mind, Dillard maintains. The key is

to “allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness” (Dillard, 3).

This, he explains, is what the “world’s spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally”

(Dillard, 3). To be a good observer requires the ability to both verbalize what is to be observed

while maintaining distance from the “ceaseless flow of trivia and trash” that clouds

consciousness (Dillard, 3). This, maintains Dillard, is “a discipline requiring a lifetime of

dedicated struggle” (Dillard, 3).

Conclusion:

What is intriguing about Dillard’s essay is her portrayal of seeing as an act of

consciousness. We may tend to think of seeing as a passive activity. For Dillard, seeing can be

more than that. In this respect, it might have been more precise, if she had entitled her essay

Observation, but then the point Dillard is making is that seeing is observing and that those of us

who are not observing are not really seeing. We are, in essence doing what David Foster

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Wallace, in his essay This is Water, calls “going on default.” In Wallace’s view many of us are

habituated to going through the motions of living without really thinking about what we’re

doing. “Learning how to think,” affirms Wallace is in essence learning “how to exercise some

control over how and what you think (and) being conscious and aware enough to choose what

you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience” (Wallace, 2).

As such, thinking means exercising a certain degree of free will and recognizing that we have the

power to make informed choices. The message in both Dillard and Wallace’s essays is

liberating. We need not be slaves of our own mind. We are free to see the world as we choose

and, since our perceptions affect the way we feel, and the way we feel affects the way we act,

and the way we acts affects others, we can posit further that our ability to make positive changes

in our lives and the lives of others depends in large part on our willingness to open our eyes to

new vistas and new possibilities. Changing the world begins with changing how we see it.

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Works Cited

Dillard, Annie. Seeing. From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Harper Perennial, 1974.

Wallace, David Foster. “This is Water.” A cleaned-up version of David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon College Commencement Address on May 21, 2005.

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Your name

Course number and section

Name of your professor

Date of completion

Title

Introduction: Discuss the how what you focus on affects the way you see the world.

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Body: Summary and Interpretation “Seeing.”

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Conclusion:Reconsider the ideas raised in the introduction and add whatever insights you have gained from your discussion of Dillard’s essay.

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Works Cited