The essays in Teaching a Stone to Talk follow a similar structure: After a description of a natural phenomenon, Dillard offers a spiritual or philosophical interpretation of it.
In “Total Eclipse,” Dillard and her husband, Gary, have traveled over five hours to witness a solar eclipse. However, as soon as they see it, they panic because it looks as if the shadow is going to devour them. She also notes how the world looks lifeless in the light before the total eclipse.
“An Expedition to the Pole” intertwines the stories of polar explorers who died because of vanity, and Dillard being at Catholic Mass. The lesson to be learned here is that one has to suppress personal desires in order to ensure that the team effort is successful.
In “Living Like Weasels” and “In the Jungle,” Dillard compares the natural world with manmade civilization, concluding that even marvels such as Hollywood, New York, or Paris are inferior to nature.
In “The Deer at Providencia,” Dillard describes a deer trapped in a rope. Every time someone tries to free its legs from a rope, it gets entangled again. Eventually, the deer is killed and eaten, and Dillard finds its meat nourishing, highlighting the deer’s role as a prey animal.
“Teaching a Stone to Talk” is about people becoming so afraid of God after he had spoken to them in frightening thunder that Moses asks God not to speak to them again. Therefore, God’s voice can now only be heard in the silence of nature.
In “On a Hill Far Away,” Dillard meets a boy at a farm. Since his parents are ultra-religious, he mechanically asks Dillard a set of religious questions. When this phase is over, he is visibly relieved that he can now talk about topics that he is really interested in, such as fishing.
In “Lenses,” Dillard recalls a childhood experience when she used to burn algae and other small living things with a lamp under the microscope. She also compares her experience of looking through a microscope with becoming an adult--while in the beginning, an inexperienced user does not see anything, the wonders of nature unfold with experience.
In “Life on the Rocks: The Galapagos,” Dillard describes the wildlife of the Galapagos islands and briefly outlines Darwin’s theories of evolution. She concludes that diversity enhances the world.
In “A Field of Silence,” Dillard describes her visions of angels over a silent field, thus emphasizing her point that the divine lives in the silence of nature.
In the story “God in the doorway” she describes her fear of Santa Claus because she thinks he is God himself and only regrets her panic reaction later when she is more mature, realizing that it was just a neighbor who wanted to bring love and joy to her. Thus, she concludes that humans have a tendency to fear God because they do not understand his true intentions.
In “Mirages,” Dillard links summer mirages with the pleasant experiences of summer in general, which disappear when winter comes.
In “Sojourner,” she compares humans to mangrove trees floating around aimlessly. However, instead of adopting a nihilistic view, she encourages the readers to celebrate the journey through nowhere.
In “Aces and Eights,” Dillard has a hard time deciding whether she should go on a trip to the mountains. She uses this inner debate to explore past, present, and future. Moreover, she describes the frightening stages that children go through when they grow up.
