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Emma Stanard

Mrs. Casady

IB HL English Year 2

25 September 2020

Prompt 4: Why are paradoxes so central to Dillard’s messages?

Throughout ​For the Time Being​ Dillard attempts to answer the overarching questions

about life and explores the meaning of humanity’s existence. In discussing these questions and

ideas, paradoxes make frequent appearances in the work. One of the most central messages to

Dillard’s work is that try as one might, life is not easy to understand and there are no clear

answers. Paradoxes are so central to this message because they show that seemingly illogical

conclusions can be true and epitomize the contradictory nature of life.

One of the most prominent paradoxical ideas that shows up in Dillard’s work is the idea

that humans are both significant and insignificant. Dillard reminds the reader that “It only took a

few typhoon waves to drown 138,000 Bangladeshis on April 30, 1991. We see generations of

waves rise from the sea that made them; we see them dwindle and vanish back” (Dillard 109).

With Dillard’s use of the statistics and the offhand nature of her statement “it only took a few

typhoon waves,” the reader gets a sense of how small and unimportant one individual can be.

Through the imagery and motif of the water, she shows how individuals are all just part of an

indistinguishable larger whole, much like the ebbing and flowing waves. On the other hand,

Dillard also mentions that Emperor Qin was “forty-five years old when he buried 260 real

Confucian scholars alive” (Dillard 56). Through the same use of statistics we see how just one

man affected so many lives in such a negative way. The burial here is an ending for these 260
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people and all of their loved ones, and it was brought about by one man. This is important

because Dillard connects the paradoxical idea of human insignificance and individual

significance with the common thread of statistics, emphasizing their interconnectedness. The

interconnectedness of significance and insignificance relates to Dillard’s message about the

human inability to understand life by showing how individuals can be both important and

unimportant.

The idea that people can be simultaneously important and unimportant also shows up

when Dillard discusses life and death. Dillard talks of people she had encounters with and

wonders “Which of these people are still alive?” (Dillard 159). Her wondering this shows how

these people that she interacted with, even for a moment, made an impact on her, as she still

remembers them. They were significant to her. But she also points out that all of the dead are just

“insignificant others” and that “living or dead, they are just some plentiful others” (Dillard 159).

The contrast of her remembering specific people but also claiming that people are plentiful and

living or dead, they are insignificant, emphasizes the paradoxical message that people are both

important and unimportant parts of a whole. Dillard uses this paradox to show that life does not

have simple answers and that whether or not people are important doesn’t have a clear answer, it

depends on perspective. Her whole book is about exploring questions that pertain to the

significance and interconnectedness of human life and the paradox of human importance is so

prominent because it is one of the more difficult questions to answer.

Another prominent paradox is the view that science and religion or philosophical thought

can coexist without diminishing the credibility of each other. Dillard uses the character of

Teilhard as a prime example of this idea, as he was a Jesuit priest and a writer as well as a
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paleontologist” (Dillard 102). As a religious man and a scientist, Teilhard embodies the paradox

of science and religion coexisting. Dillard mentions Teilhard throughout her novel in order to

emphasize that religion and science do not have to be mutually exclusive, but can exist as both

valid schools of thought. This is important because both are ways that people attempt to

understand life and despite their seemingly contradictory natures, they may not be so different.

Dillard, in exploring the nature of science’s ability to answer questions states, “If, then, the

human layer in which we spend our lives is an epiphenomenon in nature’s mechanical doings…

then science, which is, God knows, correct, nevertheless cannot address what interests us most:

What are we doing here?” (Dillard 95). Mentioning the human layer that we spend our lives in

goes back to the idea of human significance, but Dillard’s main focus is on answering the

question of life’s purpose. Her statement that God knows that science is correct furthers her point

that religion and science can coexist, which seems to be a paradoxical idea. This is so important

to Dillard’s messages about the meaning of life because she believes that both science and

religion are tools to understanding the world, which she spends the whole book attempting to do.

Paradoxes about human importance and means for understanding the world are so

important to Dillard’s message that life is not simple and does not have clear answers to its

important questions because the concept of a paradox epitomizes the idea of life’s inconsistent

nature.