An American Childhood Written by Annie Dillard

An American Childhood is written by Annie Dillard in 1987. This short story is about her childhood memory. On a winter morning, seven years old Dillard and her friends were looking for fun on Reynolds Street where they lived, and then they started making ice balls to throw at passing cars. It happened when one of the ice balls hit a black Buick which was running on the street. The driver stopped the car at the side of the road and he got out of the car. Suddenly, he started running toward the kids to catch them. He was chasing Dillard and the other boy’s name is Mikey Fahey. Unbelievable, they just kept running and running, but the guy still kept chasing them without giving up. At the end, Dillard and Mikey get caught by the guy and he only said “You stupid kids” in angry motion then make his way back to the car. According to the story, I think Dillard was a girl who had bad manners (1st paragraph page 22). She preferred boy’s activity rather than girl’s activity (2nd paragraph page 23). The way author wrote in the first and second paragraphs really help me to know what kind of child Dillard was. “If in that snowy backyard...i would have died happily…” (21st paragraph page 25) Dillard realized that she was wrong and she shouldn’t have done that. At the middle of the story, “he would never give up, this man” (paragraph 14 page 24) and at the end of the story “he could only begin, you stupid kids” (paragraph 20 page 25). Those quotes showed that the way she saw the guy had changes and I think this is the most interested part in the