A. C. Benson’s “The Art of the Essayist” illustrates the characteristics and criteria of the essayist–a writer with personality who is not a poet or a romancer, but one who perceives life as it is, simple and raw (42). Benson implies that a good essayist can capture the human experience, interactive relationships, and the simplistic nature of life, through an ordinary scope in order to evoke emotion and mood.

Utilizing Benson’s concept about the essayist, we, as the reader, can come to understand Annie Dillard’s “Total Eclipse.” Dillard tells the story of a woman and her husband, Gary, who embark on a journey to explore nature’s dark side, an unforgettable eclipse wrapped with throbbing emotions of haunting wonder and thrill. The author is an expert essayist in the way she maps out details in the retelling of a nostalgic memory. She cleverly evokes emotions through every day life by upholding on a particular method; at first, Dillard describes picturesque scenes by relying on the five senses in full detail, but then leaves the reader hanging when she abruptly changes the subject with a sentence that continues the plot. For example, when Dillard describes the hotel lobby, she states:

“Beside us on an overstuffed chair, absolutely motionless, was a platinum-blonde woman in her forties wearing a black silk dress and a strand of pearls. Her long legs were crossed; she supported her hand on her fist” (Dillard, 98).

Here, Dillard gives a simple yet detailed picture of the scene in the hotel lobby room with quick short snippets such as the “platinum-blonde woman in her forties.” She wants the reader to pick at each detail like her “strand of pearls” or her seductive and seemingly distraught expression “with her hand on her fist”–to be curious about who this woman was and what was she doing in the hotel at the time. She wants the reader to ask all these questions, to ascertain more information about this mysterious woman, to critically think and imagine her backstory. Dillard is an essayist in the way she keeps the reader wondering, bustling with curiosity.