Summary of Jest and Earnest
In the opening paragraph of the excerpt, the writer, Dillard begins with the common experience regarding the frogs and their invisible positions. The frogs would hide somewhere and jumped over her feet and splash into the water. Such splashing by the frog for other people make afraid. For the narrator, it has become an amusement activities. She even observes the changes in texture of frogs in mud, bunk, water, grass and so on. When she goes closer to the frog, it begins to shrink like a deflating football. Suddenly, she saw the frog was being sucked by a giant water bug.
According to the writer, there are different methods of eating by animals. Some carnivorous animals eat their prey alive. The common. way of defeat the prey is to down or grasp so that the prey can not run away and they eat the whole. But frogs catch their preys by sticky tongue and eat them.
These small wonders in nature drive her thought to God and his creations. She quotes from the Koran to talk about the creation.
In the Koran, Allah asks "The heaven and the earth and in between, thickest thou I made them in jest? Thus, Allah shows his surprise in the creation of the universe. He is confused whether the creator made his creations by jest or earnest.
She invites our attention to the very act of creation and the existence of God. She adds the concept of Pascal. The Latin term 'Deus Absconditus' (hidden God) was used by Pascal, one of the greatest Christian apologists, physicist and writer. To describe the existence of creator, he uses the term, Deus Absconditus. He thinks that essence of god is ever hidden, so our naked eyes can not view him. Similarly, Einstein describes God as subtle, but not malicious. He further says that nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur not by her cunning. For Einstein, God is a metaphor for nature and natural order. In other words, Einstein thinks that god is not evil but helpful. His form is so subtle so that we cannot see or feel. Nature is so great because she hides the god with herself.
At last, Dillard writes that God has not absconded but spread as a fabric of spirit.