Total Eclipse

Annie Dillard’s “Total Eclipse” is a nonfiction reflective essay featured in Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982), a collection of brief essays exploring the process of introspection triggered by human encounters with the world. “Total Eclipse” delves into the author’s contemplation of the vastness and complexities of the universe during a total solar eclipse in 1979. The narrative explores themes that include The Transience of Human Existence, The Contrast Between the Mundane and the Extraordinary, and The Transformative Power of Nature.

Other works by this author include The Writing Life, For the Time Being, and Holy the Firm.

This guide references the version of “Total Eclipse” republished in The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New by Ecco-HarperCollins in 2017.

Annie Dillard is an American author whose work focuses on philosophical perspectives on life experiences and humankind’s intricate connection with the natural world. Dillard’s writings explore themes that encompass nature and the many facets of human experience. In “Total Eclipse,” Dillard describes her first experience witnessing the eponymous astronomical event, prompting her reflections on the vastness of the universe, feelings about the place she lives, and how she views the people in her life. In its four parts, the piece combines a narrative account of the trip to view the eclipse with musings on the ramifications of witnessing the event.

In Part 1, the narration begins the day before the eclipse. Dillard and her husband, Gary, travel by car from their home on the Pacific Coast to Central Washington to watch the eclipse the next day.

Earlier that day, the couple traverses a makeshift tunnel carved through an avalanche that blocked a pass in the Cascade Mountains, impeding their progress to the hotel. In the essay’s opening line, Dillard writes, “It had been like dying, that sliding down the mountain pass” (14). As they descend from the mountains into the valley, Dillard notes the changing landscape and differences in wildlife. They arrive at their hotel, the lobby of which is “dark, derelict” and includes a large aquarium, a caged canary, and a small pail and shovel. She describes specific details that remain etched in her recollection, such as a painting of a clown’s head made of vegetables hanging in their room. In the lobby, Dillard reads an article about gold mines around the world, noting that their depth means they’re dangerously hot unless air conditioned. She considers the article as she lies awake in the hotel room.

Subsequently, Dillard describes the morning of the eclipse. In her account of the predawn moments of the morning of Monday, February 26, 1979, she narrates their journey through the unfamiliar terrain to find a hilltop in the Yakima Valley to witness the eclipse.

As Part 2 begins, Dillard and Gary climb a grassy 500-foot hill. They notice others gathering in the hills with the same purpose: “It looked as though we had all gathered on hilltops to pray for the world on its last day” (17). She notes the orchards and fields in the valley below as the sun rises and more eclipse viewers gather.

Dillard describes how the eclipse begins “with no ado” (17) when a part of the sun suddenly disappears. She compares the beginning phase of the eclipse to a partial eclipse she had witnessed seven years prior, noting that they are vastly different events. As the moon increasingly covers the sun, the day turns into nighttime. She encounters not the tranquil, predictable darkness that she is accustomed to, but an unexpected “deep indigo” sky and a light that casts the grasses and people around them in “platinum.” She compares the landscape around her to “a movie filmed in the Middle Ages” (18). As the eclipse reaches its climax, she notes that she hears screams from the hills around her as the sun becomes a “worn ring” and the stars become visible.

In Part 3, Dillard further explores the magnitude and meaning of what she witnessed, first referencing the gold miners she read about in the hotel: “It is now that the temptation is strongest to leave these regions […] why burn our hands any more than we have to?” (19). Noting again that it has been two years since the event, Dillard reflects on the experience of seeing the sun reduced to a white ring in a dark sky. She remarks on its “devastation,” comparing the sight to seeing a “mushroom cloud” in the distance. Dillard writes that the eclipse “obliterated meaning itself” (20), noting that “meaning” and “significance” only matter if there are people. She ponders the human incapacity to fully capture the magnitude of the universe via photographs and telescopes, to notice the speed at which the Crab Nebula is expanding or the slow pace at which lichens grow. Feeling as though she is inhabiting a world of “the dead,” Dillard questions her ability to remember the world in the light.

Dillard begins Part 4 with a meditation on “waking up,” noting that adults, unlike children, have “mastered” this “transition.” Still, she writes, people spend much of their time dreaming and thinking—privately. The products of this time only have value when people bring them to “the surface” and give them meaning.

After leaving the hills, the couple stops at a restaurant, where they encounter other observers and attentively listen to their observations of the eclipse. One young man compares the white ring light of the eclipse to a “Life Saver,” which leads Dillard to reflect on her envy of the man being able to access words she could not after traversing the “levels” of her experience. The restaurant—“a decompression chamber” (24)—is where she processes the “most terrifying” part of her experience: the people screaming during the climax of the eclipse as the moon’s shadow rolled over the hills. Even during this moment of terror, cars in the valley below headed toward workplaces, as though oblivious to the sky around them.

Dillard and Gary return to the coast, passing through the now-open pass previously affected by the avalanche. Dillard compares the familiarity of the drive to the complex feelings inspired by the eclipse. She mentions that the “real world” began when the sunlight returned and the sky blued, and so they don’t look back to the hills. The essay concludes with a return to normalcy, but it is clear that for Dillard, normal is irrevocably altered.