Annie Dillard's "So This Was Adolescence" is a section of her 1987 book, An American Childhood. In the excerpt you read in class, Dillard experiences adolescence as an identity crisis. She describes her behavior with graphic imagery and questions whether she might "lose the world forever, that I had so loved."
Please answer the following questions in Googledocs.
Your responses are due on Wednesday, 4/29/15.
1. What "hit" the author when she was sixteen?
2. How does the metaphor of the tunnel and her movement in it relate to the author's sense of self? How does it relate to her description of what follows?
3. What details of her attitudes and behaviors tell you about Annie Dillard's experience of adolescence?
4. What evidence is brought forward that the author was "what they called a live wire?"
5. What does the author mean by being "transparent" to herself? How is that state contrasted with her being in her own way? (In one of the final paragraphs, Dillard actually says, "Now I was in my own way...")
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." - Annie Dillard
