The lives of these men are depending on one air conditioner. It is a machine that could turn off -- just quit working at any time -- and that would be the end. The elevator ride up seems important because the men come out with ghostly pale faces -- like they know that they have cheated death once again.
There is something about the Life Saver as well at the end of the essay that makes one think of death or loss. It is like Dillard is finding hope though. She says, "I grabbed that life saver and rode it to the surface. And I had to laugh. I had been dumbstruck on the Euphrates River, I have been dead and gone and grieving, all over the sight of something which, if you could claw your up to that level, you would grant looked very much like a Life Saver" (Dillard 13). Perhaps there is something about her going to some kind of depth. This experience of seeing the total eclipse brought her to a place where she feels...
She also calls the boy a walking alarm clock, which could possibly mean that he has woken her up by her seeing that he has a camera. The experience maybe means less to her because she knows that he will be showing photos to people, but they will never get what it truly meant to be there and to see what she saw. Perhaps this is a comment on our lives, in general, how we go around trying to save the memory of things film, but the things we really remember are the things that we never thought we'd care about in the first place (like the clown, which she can't ever forget).
Works Cited
Dillard, Annie. The Annie Dillard Reader. Harper Perennial. 1995.…
