Essay Database

Jest and Earnest essay by David Woolf <Tab/>Annie Dillard's "Jest and Earnest" is a complete contradiction. It compares three different points of views. The title itself is a juxtaposition, the word jest has to do with fun, and earnest is a sort of conservative seriousness. Dillard tries to convey her beliefs on creation and how even seemingly complete opposites have something in common. She depicts for us a vivid description …

…of utter chaos. Everything that happens is just "random combinations of matter gone amok." <Tab/>The universe is full of limits and at the same time limitless. Limitless beauty and limitless violence are always proximate and proportional to one another. There is a "jest" side and an "earnest" side to all that is known. There is a link between beauty and violence, life and death, order and chaos, jest and earnest.