Part One: Pages 15 through 38 Summary and Analysis

"The story," Dillard writes, without indicating what the story is, "starts back in 1950, when I was five" (15). These years were spent largely in silence; people were busy restarting their lives after the end of the war, and mothers and their children generally spent their days at home in silence. Anne's life, though young, was very reflective, and she characterizes this period as transition in and out of consciousness of the world around her. During this time, she began to climb out of many of her childhood fantasies. She used to imagine a monster was creeping into her room periodically throughout the night, but later discovered that it was just the headlights of a car coming through her bedroom window.

One facet of her growing desire to discover and analyze the world was touching the skin...