The Chase Annie Dillard Summary

In “The Chase” by Annie Dillard, the actual chase sequence is only six paragraphs long, a relatively short selection. But when read by the reader the passage seems to be much longer than only six paragraphs. This effect is made possible through Dillard’s excellent use of description, details, transitions, repetition, sentence variety, parallelism, point of view, and tension. “He ran after us, and we ran away from him, up the snowy Reynolds sidewalk. At the corner, I looked back; incredibly, he was still after us. He was in city clothes: a suit and tie, street shoes. Any normal adult would have quit, having sprung us into flight and made his point. This man was gaining on us. He was a thin man, all action. All of a sudden, we were running for our lives.”(105) In this paragraph we see the very detailed style of writing that
This very unique transition is unlike most transitions that would tell the reader how far the chase has gone or how much time has expired. But, Dillard’s story lacks these time markers, thus making a short period of time seem much longer. The transitions to the next couple paragraphs also lack time markers. Paragraph 12, “He chased Mikey and me around the yellow house….”. Paragraph 13 “He chased us silently, block after block”. Paragraph 14 “Mikey and I had nowhere to go”. No concept of time can be drawn from any of these transitions, so for all the reader knows two hours have passed. One cannot tell. Little children always see things much bigger than they actually are. The fact that this story is written from the point of view of a seven year old, is of great credit to Dillard as she perfectly puts that childish grandeur to great use in this story. All the streets seem twice as long, the man seems twice as big and fast, and everything takes more time because Dillard puts the reader into the body of a little seven year old child in a huge unfathomable