Diction in Annie Dillard’s Living Like Weasels and Ellen Goodman’s The Company Man

Between Annie Dillard’s Living Like Weasels and Ellen Goodman’s The Company Man, the effective use of diction is a vital element to the authors’ styles. In Dillard’s writing, the careful selection of words highlights the depth of theme in which the essay is written. Goodman, in a similar fashion, uses words whose multiple meanings and interpretations further append depth of theme and offer a method in which the subject of the essay is displayed in more ways than mere sentences. However, the depth and importance in which the selection of words contributes to Living Like Weasels places it upon higher prominence, provoking thought from a reader that may not be achieved through The Company Man.

            As the narrator explores the conscious mind decisions of weasels in Living Like Weasels, she explains, “This is yielding, not fighting.” (P. 110) Here, the use of the “yielding” contains a depth in which the delicacy of diction is prominent. As the speaker continues to discuss, the weasel’s consciousness yields to necessity; the contrast of this idea to the mindfulness of the human psyche forms the core of Dillard’s essay. Thus, the speaker’s wording of the weasel’s existence is vital to conveying the comparison between mindfulness and necessity.

            In The Company Man, wording such as “precisely at 3:00 A.M. Sunday morning,” (P. 173) and, “the sixty-year-old company president told the forty-year-old widow that the fifty-year-old deceased…” (P. 174) serve to highlight the calculative and precise way of living in which the subject of the essay was killed.  Through use of this diction, the author conveys an underlying aid to presentation of the essay’s theme. Even after the death of Phil, the ironic uses of quantitative descriptions highlight the main theme of his life: he worked hard for the business, often disregarding the appropriate care and time necessary to provide for his family. By describing people and events numerically, the author’s use of diction highlights the imbalance that was present in Phil’s life.

            As is apparent in Dillard’s writing, diction is a vastly important element to her style. While the subject material may not be as enthralling as others, the rich, subject-appropriate language in which events are crafted greatly contribute to the work as a whole. Further examples include, “I remember muteness as a prolonged and giddy fast, where every moment is a feast of utterance received.” (P. 110) and “…marshy end of the pond, a plush jetty raised from the thorn shore between a shall blue body of water and a deep blue body of sky.” (P. 108) While the beauty of nature can be incredibly difficult to dilute into mere language, the diction presented by Dillard provides the reader with a realistic, in-depth portrait of the situations, themes, and circumstances found in her explorations.

            As diction is a building block to the elegance of Dillard’s writing, word choice provides a polishing finish on the themes of Goodman’s writing. With emphasis on the calculative diction of The Company Man, Goodman’s expression of themes can be understood without the elegant diction placed upon them. However, the subtle references to the life in which the subject of the essay conveys serve only to supplement the work. This contrasts with Dillard’s use of diction, and therefore leads a reader to become more aware of Living Like Weasels’ imperative word choice than of The Company Man’s polishing language.