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Interpretation

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Living Life by Your Own Moral Compass
Annie Dillard's essay entitled "Living Like Weasels" is a journey into the way human beings might live contrasted with the thoughts of how weasels live. In this beautifully written essay, Dillard describes her chance encounter with an ordinary weasel and how it helped her receive understanding into the difference between the way human beings live their lives and the way wild animals go about theirs. She does this by offering up vivid descriptions and images concerning her quick, but thought provoking run in with the reclusive weasel. Dillard is attempting to show us that we can discover a lot about the true way to live by observing nature's other creations. Yet, at the same time telling us that the way we live is totally up to us, which leads me to my personal interpretation.
One could argue humans that lived during the Neanderthal period were similar to that of a weasel. Throughout time the mental capacity of the human has grown to be far more complex and sophisticated than earlier times. With that being said the weasel as we know acts off of pure instinct, whereas the human mind needs to process and articulate each move we make. People often search a definite answer on how to live their lives, as if there is a road map or instructions that will lead you to resolution. Actually, the truth is we, humans, are blessed with an ability that separates us from any other creature; the capacity to intelligently choose to live as we please, instead of how we were created to. I believe that in earlier times humans lived as Neanderthals and were definitely more like the weasel than they were different. Dillard alludes to us how the weasel acts and lives, when she notes “The weasel lives in necessity” (91). Similar to the weasel, back in those times humans only hunted out of necessity and for survival. Basically, these humans

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