Why does Dillard question both the morality and the compassion of nature?

Dillard struggles with the paradox of a world that is both full of horrors and beauty. Dillard does realize that perhaps it is her own attitude and reaction to what she observes that makes nature at times seem cruel or pointless, but she does not yet have a way to counteract her reactions of horror, when, for instance, she observes the female mantis bite the head off her mate. Dillard suggests that the grace and beauty that she observes may help to counterbalance nature's brutality, but her final conclusion is that everything that lives ultimately dies.