The Fragility of Life
Throughout the book, Dillard's dominant theme appears to be the fragility of life. She's discussing this temporary experience which we call life, choosing to meditate upon the impermanent nature of life. From newborns to genocides, she attacks the fragility of life from all direction. Catching upon this idea of how delicate life is, she spends several segments talking about how an infant has no power of volition in its birth and infancy. Born in such a dependent state, humans immediately face the fear of death. In such a delicate balance of vitality, Dillard discusses how vulnerably each person must walk through life. The theme continues even through discussion of nature. She uses the sand as a metaphor for the constant forward progress of time. Just like the sand of a minute ago has been washed away by the waves, so a person can never regain youth. They're on a one-way journey.
History
History plays an important role in Dillard's book because she's writing about the common state of all humanity. She draws upon real people and places to color her meditations. To her men like Tielhard de Chardin embody the idea of living in harmony of body, mind, and soul. He dedicated himself to theology but soon realized that he needed a material surrogate through which to explore God, deciding upon paleontology. Through a discussion of Chinese history, Jewish history, and various philosophers and religious men whom she admires, Dillard threads brief histories among her prose.
Physical Reality vs. Spiritual Forces
A great deal of Dillard's book is devoted to the juxtaposition of the material and the spiritual. To her, they are forever intertwined. Her discussion of sand somehow relates back to the sovereignty of God. And the section about evil includes both historical demonstrations of violence and a discussion of the intellectual suffering of the highly intelligent. In either case, both elements exist in conversation to one another. Dillard uses the material as a metaphor for the spiritual, and the spiritual becomes the meaning behind the material. Her perspective upon the universe is holistic and harmonious. She joins her consciousness to her body in a meditation upon the powers that be.
