Analysis: Walter Percy's The Loss of Creation

Percy explains that as Cardenas had no intention of discovering the Grand Canyon, his expectations of the sight he beheld had not yet formed. This allowed him to form his own opinions on the sight instead of being influenced by previous explorers' recountings. He uses the example of a Boston man who takes family on a vacation to the Grand Canyon. He first studies brochures and fliers. Then, satisfied with what he sees, he signs him and his family up for

Percy gives three examples to prove his point. His first example describes a tourist’s plans to go see the Grand Canyon. Oftentimes, tourists have preconceived expectations about the wonder, and feel that they are let down with a dreary sight rather than the miraculous wonder they have fantasized. The second example Percy uses is of a couple who, while wandering through Mexico looking for an “unspoiled” place (a place which

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote this poem "Ozymandias" to express to us that possessions do not mean immortality. He used very strong imagery and irony to get his point across throughout the poem. In drawing these vivid and ironic pictures in our minds, Shelley was trying to explain that no one lives forever, and nor do their possessions. Shelley expresses this poem’s moral through a vivid and ironic picture. A shattered stone statue with only the legs and head remaining, standing in the desert, the face is proud and arrogant, "Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read"(lines, 4-6).

During this essay written by Walker Percy, it is clear that his overall opinion of experiencing new things is in the eye of the beholder and/or the hands of those around them and their social status. Percy uses many examples in his writing including that of an explorer, tourist, and local all seeing things for the first time either literally or in a new different light. In this essay, I will play on both sides of regaining experiences, seeing things on a different level then before or the first time. Regaining experiences is a valid argument brought up by Percy as it is achievable. While criticizing each side of the argument, I will also answer questions as to the validity of Percy's argument,

In Walker Percy’s, “The Loss of the Creature”, Percy argues that individuals are not capable of having authentic experiences due to his idea of double deprivation, in the sense that experiences are prepackaged for the consumer and are also subject to spoliation. Also that individuals associate objects with a term in which makes that object subject to symbolic complex. Where it is not impossible but simply rare to see an individual capable of having an authentic experience. He also explains to the reader how most experiences one encounters are packaged for them, in which the individual cannot have an authentic experience. Furthermore, he explains how some experiences are also a victim of spoliation as well, in the sense that not only are individuals incapable of having authentic experiences but they are spoiled as well. Whereas one has in a sense lost their sovereignty due to not being able to formulate authentic experiences without

A glaring irregularity in the steady stream of supporting statements Percy puts forth is the example of a tourist couple that gets lost in the mountains and ends up ”…in a tiny valley not even marked on the map. There they discover an Indian village.” At a glance, this is a perfect example of true discovery! It is everything that Percy wants the reader to have! But as the reader keeps reading, he quickly realizes that he has fallen into the same trap the aforementioned tourists fell into. “The couple know at once that this is ‘it’….Yet it is more likely that what happens is…a rather desperate impersonation…an actual loss of hope.” After the winded reader gets up from the height from which he just fell, he realizes that the couple, as Percy says, “…[Has] the experience in the bag.” Discovery itself is a tourist attraction. It is this example that indicates that there is no other way to regain sovereignty than through the individual’s own perception. No amount of literal discovery will create the subjective experience of discovery. This conjecture is verified when Percy later points out that the couple wants their expert friend to see the village “not to share their experience, but to certify their experience as genuine.” The couple wants to bag and tag their “discovery,” effectively

Huxley reflects the consequences of totalitarian World State, upon the concern of oppressed citizens. Provoked by Freud and with Mendel’s work on genetic engineering and consumerism early 20th century, Huxley chose a science fiction medium to warn the audience as they venture into the political beliefs and attitudes of the World State and identify its dehumanising effects. The imperative verb, ‘unescapable’ as Huxley states “All conditioning aims at…making people like their unescapable social destiny” (Ch 1) illustrates the loss of freedom due to scientific means which have constrained them into accepting the ideology taught by the World State. Huxley provides ‘John the Savage’ a sense of freedom from the Mexican Reservation where he is given thought, emotions and choice. Although he exclaims “How beauteous mankind is!” in the metaphorical “O brave new world” (Ch8) compared to the Reservation’s society, after seeing the oppression and nothingness of the World State he feels the oppression. This is stressed by the asyndeton of his desires using the personal pronoun ‘I’ in “But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin” (Ch 17) as John identifies the powerlessness and mindlessness of the citizens. Though Huxley through John’s anti-thesis “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”

Walker Percy explored the different aspects of human behavior in his essay, “Loss of the Creature.” He saw people for being blind to the potential they have in the activities they do. The world is being seen through phones and pictures, never by the real experiences or by the naked eye. Humans will experience a vast amount of information in their lives, but too much exposure leads to boredom. Percy's opinion is to experience subjects on your own, to think about what is happening, instead of being told or shown, and to discover what has never been found before. Tours are useless, projects are disregarding towards their meaning, and his essay persuades people to look at life through a harder and beneficial way.

All he cares about is the result; Walton does not care about the big picture. For this reason, Walton’s pursuit of knowledge is unacceptable, and his imagination has gotten too far because he does not know what he is getting himself into. The theme is that one should not go based off their innate knowledge on perilous journeys, explorers and others should know that there is a limit to their imagination.

This article “The Loss of Creation” main idea is that we are not able to see things as they are. The article explains that we are not able to see things as it is because before we see that thing or place we already have an expectation for it. We hear it or see it on social media or through our friends. Percy uses an example that help us understand that idea. He uses an example to help us see how we lose that ability to see things the way we are supposed to be, unexpected. In the reading he encourages the readers to experience the real experience. The real experience would be when people don't look at the brochures and ignore everything they have ever heard about that place before you begin the journey. The Grand Canyon was his example. He suggested

The “Angry Couple” video depicts a therapeutic session concerning an angry couple who appears to be having difficulty listening to the concerns each have with the other, their relationship and with their therapist. Before the therapy session begins, Dr. Susan Heitler arranges the room for symmetry and interaction. She then begins the therapeutic session by asking a few intake interview questions to better assist the couple in the counseling process.

But how misled I actually was—at least, in Walker Percy’s eyes. In his essay, “The Loss of the Creature,” Percy recalls a scene from The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter:

The collection of essays included within This I Believe II truly challenged my ability to think critically in regards to the variety of perspectives illustrated throughout the entirety of the text. Within some essays, I quickly related to the themes the author was trying to exemplify; such as David Gessner in his essay entitled A Feeling of Wildness. Gessner expressed that through the observations of life and death he made with the decline of his father’s health and the welcome of his first child’s birth, that, “there is something wilder lurking below the everyday, and that, having tasted this wildness, we return to our ordinary lives both changed and charged”(90). In my reflection of this essay, I found a great agreement with Gessner’s idea

On of the most influential romantic English poets of the 19th century was Percy Bysshe Shelley. He was born August 4th 1792 to Sir Timothy and Elizabeth Pilford Shelley in Field Place, Horsham, Sussex, England. (Crook) Shelley was the oldest of six children. He had one brother, John and four sisters, Mary, Elizabeth, Hellen, and Margaret. His family lived a very comfortable lifestyle, especially his dad’s father, Bysshe Shelley whom owned quite a few estates. Shelley’s father was also a member of parliament.

In the gothic novel Frankenstein, author Mary Shelley offers an ominous tale of science gone terribly wrong using the theme of the father and son relationship that also goes terribly wrong. Though Victor Frankenstein does not give birth per se to the Monster, Frankenstein is for all intents and purposes the Monster's father as he brings him to life via his scientific knowledge. Once the Monster is alive he looks to Frankenstein to protect him as a father would, but Frankenstein who is mortified by his creation shuns him. The longer the Monster lives without Frankenstein's love and the more he discovers what he is missing, the angrier he gets and he sets out on a mission to destroy Victor Frankenstein. In Frankenstein, Shelley's purpose is to reveal what happens to society at large when individuals fail in their duties as parents.