Walker Percy essays

Walker Percy essays When a tourist first comes to USA, there are many places that he is told to visit. He can go to see Statue of Liberty, Empire State building, Mountain Rushmore, Grand Canyon. These places are all interesting, informative and fun places to visit. But can the tourist really experience everything at these locations? Walker Percy in his essay, The Loss of the Creature discusses how through preconceptions and the surrender of our sovereignty, humans lose the ability to experience life, and its elements, in fresh and innovative ways. Percy begins his essay with an example of the visitor who always wanted to visit Grand Canyon and his experience by the ideas and thoughts of what it should be when he was there. The second part of his essay he discusses the differences between learning with and without the surprise of the discovery at the educational system. Humans have lost the surprise of discovery because of the preconceptions they bring to experience. Percy states, The highest point, the term of the sightseers satisfaction, is not the sovereign discovery of the thing before him; it is rather the measuring up of the thing to the preformed symbolic complex. When we are experiencing something instead of perceiving it based on its own merits, we try to see what we have already learned about that place or subject. He offers many ways to go about retrieving the loss. Percy says, It may be recovered by leaving the beaten track(566). He suggests to choose the road less traveled by. He also wants us to make a track of our own and choose our own direction. Percy recommends recovery through national disaster or a break down of symbolic machinery(567). Through a national disaster something that used to be no longer exists. That which has stood through the years becomes more powerful when destroyed. Best example for this is World Trade Center maybe after September 11 ...