Nature in Holy the Firm

Annie Dillard, in Holy the Firm, digests the world around her and uses this as fuel in her journey to defining God and what God means to her. Although this novel takes place over only three days (examined in the three parts of the book) her thoughts are stated extensively throughout the text. Although it may seem difficult to understand at times, Dillard’s exploration of nature (which is caught up with her search for enlightenment) is shifted to reflect her journey’s stage at each section of this novel.

The first section of the book is named Newborn and Salted. Dillard begins the passage with describing each day as a god. She sees every day in terms of the nature which is in it. Dillard states, ‘The god lifts from the water’ (12). Instead of describing the day in regular terms, Dillard describes the day and what she sees as the presence and manifestation of God. She introduces where she lives- Puget Sound and describes the Pacific, the god’s breasts rising from pastures, his fingers being firs, and ‘Islands slip blue from his shoulders and glide over the water, the empty, lighted water like a stage’ (12). Dillard describes the ‘god’ of each of the three days differently. Dillard describes the first day as ‘real’. Why? She details its realness with clarity. “...the sky clicks securely in place over the mountains, locks around the islands, snaps slap on the bay. Air fits flush on farm roofs; it rises inside the doors of barns and rubs at yellow barn windows. Air clicks up my hand cloven into fingers and wells in my ears’ holes, whole and entire. I call it simplicity, the way matter is smooth and alone” (13). Dillard keeps company with the animals around her. Although she states that she jokes with Small the cat when she asks him about last night, I believe his re-occurrence in her writing and her relationship with the spider that follows, that it is more than mere joking. She feels a deep connection to the nature and other living things around her. While I do believe that it has a lot to do with her spiritual search, I do not believe that this connection is forced at all.

Dillard reflects on two summers ago when she was camping alone in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The setting and purpose for this visit show that Dillard believes in the power nature. She wanted to regain inspiration for writing so she retreated into nature- alone. At every instance she describes how nature was interacting around and with her. In this instance, she mentions the warblers overhead swinging on the leaves and the bristle worms trailing inches over the twiggy dirt at her feet. She always describes her actions alongside what is taking place in nature. This is an important tendency which shows its head very clearly even in the first part of the book. It becomes so interesting because she doesn't merely use nature as an introduction or a backdrop but she genuinely believes that one cannot work without the other and her experience would not be the same if those occurences had not taken place in nature at the time. Dillard describes how one night a moth flew into the candle “was caught, burnt dry and held” (16). She describes the catching and burning of the moth in acute detail. After the moth is burnt, Dillard asks “ Had she been old or new? Had she mated and laid her eggs, had she done her work?” (17). She seems genuinely concerned although she did not try to retrieve the moth out of the fire. It seems that Dillard is stating that things are simply happening naturally- actions causing reactions without any interference. Dillard subscribes to the view that being alone in nature is going to help her control her temper and become more peaceful. She wakes with the sun. “Breathe fast: we’re backing off the rim” (21), she states after describing the islands, rolling skies, Virginia. Here she seems to be showing, to me, that things are going on. Although she is amazed at the nature around her, she seems to be in awe that everything is going on without interference. Time and eternity are aspects that interact with each other throughout her writing. “Time is eternity’s pale interlinear, as the islands are the seas’s” (21).

 Dillard describes grandiose things with nature then goes on to describe the inside of her room as bare as a skull. Somehow these things do not seem disjointed. This may be because of the link that Dillard establishes throughout the essay. She always links nature with the things that are occurring in her life. “A nun lives in the fires of the spirit, a thinker lives in the bright wick of the mind, an artist lives jammed in the pool of material” (22) but the narrator lives in a room as plain as a skull. Dillard then  interchanges her previous designations. This can be interpreted to mean that nothing is fixed to her. It’s all changeable and change can happen naturally; nothing has to be forced. “But this room is a skull, a fire tower, wooden, and empty.’ She described what others brains are filled with but hers is empty. She seems to be implying by her use of the word ‘empty’ after the preceding comments that her room as well as and more importantly, her skull is open to being filled. The narrator lives alone and by her description, it almost seems as if ‘land and water, islands, and sky’ (22) are her companions. Nature is far more than a backdrop to her life. She actually connects with nature on a deeper level. The narrator delivers an astounding description on p. 23. She describes the land as ‘complex and shifting.’ As stated before, everything interacts with Nature. “There is a white Congregationalist church among Douglas firs,” etc. She describes the sharpness of the colors we see, how the lights interacts with nature and how our eyes process the things we see. “You can’t picture it, can you? Oh, the desk is yellow, the oak table round, the ferns alive, the mirror cold, and I never cared. I read. In the Middle Ages, I read, “the idea of a thing which a man framed for himself was always more real to him than the actual thing itself” (23). The idea/ descriptions of nature are more enthralling than nature itself to us. These amazing things and natural processes are ignored by us. We often take them for granted. “There is, in short, one country, one room, one enormous window, one cat, one spider, and one person: but I am hollow (24)”. She furthers the idea of her being hollow, she seems to be searching for something. She wants to be filled. She also names things that she sees as real: country, room, window, etc but when she speaks of ‘gods’ (with a common g) of the mornings, she does not speak with such simplicity. Or rather, she tries to speak of ‘god’ with the same simplicity as she does with the other things that she’s familiar with but the effect is not the same.

 Dillard contends that,“Nothing is going to happen in this book” (24) this is very ironic because an entire paradigm shift occurs. One may say that everything occurs in this book. She describes God’s covenant with the Israelites that instructs the salting of babies. She parallels her salting of her breakfast eggs almost in the same breath. It implies that she may sees herself as godlike with her ‘created meal.’ She sees a ‘new island’ and this, I believe represents new thought. The new changes that are about to flood her thoughts.

“The cat has dragged in a god, scorched. He is alive” (27). She is very imaginative. This part of the novel proved to be confusing for me. What I understood from it is that she does not view god the way other people do. This explanation of god almost as a fragile animal is not the way we normally speak of God. But this is the second time that she is having interactions with creatures smaller than her, the first being the moth. This time she saves it. Could Dillard be trying to show that the same way she sat and watched the moth get burnt that God may have seen the girl get burnt as well? “I seem to see a road; I seem to be on a road, walking. I seem to walk on a blacktop road that runs over a hill. The hill creates itself, a powerful suggestion” (28). She has a vivid and active imagination. So much so that the line between reality and imagination is often blurred. She lives through nature and imagination. The god of today is a child.

In God’s Tooth, Dillard transforms from watching the world as a whole to examining its smallest parts in the minerals. “The earth is a mineral speckle planted in trees” (35). She writes of Little Julie whose face was burnt off in a plane crash. “It is November 19 and no wind, and no hope of heaven, and no wish for heaven, since the meanest of people show more mercy than hounding and terrorist gods” (36). Trauma brings the question of God’s existence and nature to the fore of Dillard’s mind. Dillard’s portrayal of the actions or rather non-actions of god can be compared with her actions toward the moth and the ‘god’  she saved from the cat. She saved a creature lesser than her but why didn’t God do the same? She reflects on the last time she saw Julie. She remarks on nature and humans in this section with sarcastic awe. Comparing the complexity and specifity of humans and the Earth, Dillard parallels it with the dreadful though that “the old rake in the grass” (42) could end it all. Ironically, I see the parallel with the scripture found at James 4:14 which states, “Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” On another note, Dillard seems thrown into a crisis by the uncertainties of life in this entire section. This is evidenced by the statement, “You wake up and a plane falls out the sky” (42).  As her crisis heightens, her descriptions of nature changes. She starts looking less outwardly and more inwardly- at her actions and motives. She has spoken of her cat for the entire story and makes the abrupt statement “ I prefer dogs.” This statement is way more complex than it seems, I believe. She has been really thrown off and feels unsure about many things in this state of confusion. She dislikes the unsure feeling.

Annie Dillard speaks of the seraphs and cherubs and questions, sarcastically,“So love is greater than knowledge; how could I have forgotten?” (45) She doesn’t see the god that she envisions as being worthy of all this love because “God despises everything, apparently” (45). The oneness and peace/ acceptance felt are gone. Dillard is having a crisis and she is trying to reconcile ideas of a just god with the unjust ignorance which she perceives. “We are precisely nowhere, sinking on an entirely imaginary ice floe, into entirely imaginary seas them self adrift. Then, we reel out love’s long line alone toward a God less lovable than a grasshead, who treats us less well than we treat our lawns. Of faith I have nothing, only of truth;that this one God is a brute and traitor, abandoning us to time, to necessity and the engines of matter unhinged” (46). Dillard launches an attack on the innate nature of god and his silence on human matter despite sayings of his power and wisdom. Dillard suggests that she could be more understanding of God if he were helpless. Previously, she was naturally observing the sky, now she notices the sea, not just the froth and how it connects with the land but down to its beginning- the minerals. Likewise, she is now looking at god, trying to understand the source. “If days are gods, then gods are dead, and artists pyrotechnic fools” (50). Again, the sight of a new island represents something coming- new thinking.

She begins Holy the Firm with, “I know only enough of God to want to worship him, by any means ready to hand” (55). Shocking statement coming out of the previous section. Our preconceived notions of people who choose to include religion as a major part of our lives is usually distorted. They seem almost saintlike. Dillard implies that no one is perfect. However, throughout History some have tried to live righteously. Like nature, she is using the motivations and experiences of persons to help her understand god. She looks at God with new eyes. She views him as being worthy. Humility to God is now important to her. She contends that given the flimsiness and powerlessness of humans, who are we to question the Creator? Knowledge and service to God seems to fill her with purpose and great happiness. This light in her can be seen as a parallel to the moth filled with light which she spoke of earlier. “It sheds light in slats through my rib cage, and fills the buttressed vaults of my ribs with light pooled and buoyant. I am moth; I am light. I am prayer and I can hardly see” (65). She sees things as moving cell by cell now. Before she saw things a s a whole and took them for granted. Now she is in awe at the God who created everything “cell by cell” (65). She thinks on Holy the firm and asks is God connected to us in the same way? Looking at nature helps Dillard understand the nature of God. After making peace with nature and how it reveals that God exists and nature is good, she makes peace with what happened to Julie. She reasons that all god’s work must be righteous. Julie can now be a nun and be closer to god’s righteousness.

Dillard’s Holy the firm follows the narrator as she journeys through her crisis of faith. Nature is used by the narrator to navigate the difficult pool of he thoughts as she tries to reconcile a cruel world with a just God. She eventually looks at nature in a new way- deeper than they eyes saw earlier and she is able to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for God.

Works Cited

Dillard, Annie. Holy the Firm. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Print.

Smith, Pamela, Sr. "The Ecotheology of Annie Dillard: A Study In Ambivalence." Twenty-Third Publications, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.