Beauty And The Beast

Everyday death and agony prey upon all living things. In Annie Dillard’s, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” the inevitability of pain and cruelty is a consistent theme throughout her novel. “If the bee is heavy with honey, the wasp squeezes its crop so as to make her disgorge the delicious syrup, which she drinks by licking the tongue which her unfortunate victim, in her death-agony, sticks out her mouth at full length…” (Dillard, 64-65). This quote is one of many examples portraying the brutality that many living things go through everyday. One may ask, “How could god create something so horrid and cruel?” Yet, Dillard explains why “there is no veil cast over these horrors” (65). She says, “These are mysteries preformed in broad daylight before our very eyes; we can see every detail, and yet they are still mysteries. If, as Heraclitus suggests, god, like an oracle, neither declares nor hides, but sets forth by signs” (Dillard, 65).

Spirituality and pain are two very similar concepts. God may not shield us from these horrors and actions in this world because then we would never learn what it truly means to be malicious. Without pain and sorrow we could never have beauty and peace. You can not have one without the other.

~mcglynjs