Loss of the Creature by Walker Percy - Essay Example

English Loss of the Creature by Walker Percy Loss of creature by walker Percy is a story that revolves around the complexity of the reality and the way it is lost to the ideas that people build around it. Percy portrays the subjective nature of the reality as seen by a discoverer and a sightseer and the value that each person attaches to it. He seems to create a focus on the nature of education and the kind of the myths that surround each object, and the way this is propagated through the population. Clearly, Percy shows that the value of any object, what he terms as the creature, depends on the circumstances of encounter and the kind of significance that surrounds the same. In the education sector, the teachers created the intentions they intend on the students based on the kind of impression they create during the classroom learning. In essence, the value of any object is lost due to the subjectivity that people imparts on the creature. To start with, Percy (1) discusses the image of the Grand Canyon and the way people under different circumstances see it. He considers two different people and the way they perceive the Grand Canyon under the circumstances they see it; while the discoverer puts a lot of value on the feature, a sightseer today will have very little value for this Canyon. For the discoverer, the Canyon is a new image and a new encounter and this is the ground in which he makes judgment of the object. He has the privilege to make personal judgment on the Canyon and deduce the value of the object at that moment. However, the sightseer is a person who knows about the object and some preformed expectations of the object. Likely, people who paid the feature a visit influence the sightseer and hence they create some predefined expectations of the image. Therefore, they will go with this image and will expect the image to conform to this image. When a sightseer goes with very high expectations, they may judge the feature harshly and find it rather below their expectation. The point that passes here is that the image created by people about something influence the way people see that thing. Percy idea on the beauty of a creature is comparable to the day-to-day experiences, and the definition of beauty in the society. Beauty is subjective and the way people will describe a person will influence how others see that person. For instance, if before the encounter of someone has the image that that person is ugly, they will have such an attitude and it is this image that they will use to judge the person during their initial encounter. Likely, the person will try to search for the ugliness of the person and may even judge them in a similar manner. This subjective nature of the authenticity of an object is what leads to the “loss of the creature. To explain this subjectivity of creatures, Percy (1) points out to “the symbolic complex which has already been formed” to expound on the way the minds of the people are formed based on the opinion of others. People will react to something depending on the image that exists in their mind at the time they see it. Percy seems to criticize these preformed images and the way people expect objects to conform to these images. Percy (1) provides a mathematical explanation of the transmission of the value of an object and the experiences of the people. He states that while the discoverer attaches value P to a certain object they may only transmit a millionth of P to the millionth observer of the same object. The author gives the example of a couple who accidentally stumbles on a Mexican village and enjoys the whole experience during the time they spend there. They consider the place sovereign and this is the image they create when the leave the village. In fact, they cannot wait to return with an ethnologist who is eager to see the same image created by the couple. On their return journey, the ethnologist was disappointed and did not see any value of the village, as had been described by the couple. Percy feels that the couple had created an image that conformed only to their opinion and the ethnologist did not have a chance to judge the village by its true image, hence the disappointment. The argument of the author is that the sovereignty of a creature lies in the independence of the viewer’s mind, which is capable of making a fare judgment void of personal influence. Percy brings in the idea of the media of transmission and it influence on the image of an object. Percy (5) points out that the message of a sonnet has a value that reflects the image that it given by “the media through which the sonnet is transmitted.” The idea here is that when students read a poem, they will judge it from the point of the instructor who helps them to analyze it. The media obscures the message of the poem by introducing their own opinions and puts the same image on the learners. As such, the learners are barred from exploring the true meaning of the poem just because they have a preformed mind, which they use to judge it. Further, he says that only a clever student can be able to get the real value of the sonnet by digging into the nature of the object and exploring its message. Here, the author’s reference to the term “media” seems to be a symbolic illustration of the role of instructors in education. The teachers are responsible of transmitting information from its raw source to the learners in the most effective manner. However, he seems to criticize the influence that the instructors have on the students in the learning environment. Percy brings in the idea of packaging in the education sector and the way this influences the learning system. For instance, when biology students learn how to operate on a dogfish in the laboratory, the instructor provides a “package” to the students and they never have the chance to learn anything from the operation. The learner becomes “a consumer receiving an experience–package” from the teacher (6). Even if the student learns and passes their grades, they have learnt nothing at the end of the day. On this light, Percy states that the teachers should allow the students to use the scalpel, what he calls a “scientific instrument” to do “scientific things” (6). The idea of this author seems to rhyme with idea of many scholars who have investigated the most effective methods of learning. Scholars have considered les instructional methods of leaning as better compared to the instructive ones. The learners should have the opportunity to learn and explore so that they can learn to synthesize knowledge build creativity in the learning process. The role of the instructors is to encourage students to be more creative and independent minded as they interact with learning environment. They should beat the preformed track, and garner knowledge beyond the package provided by their instructors. This way, they will make the learning process more complete and interesting. Finally, Percy introduces the concept of the planner and the consumer and the expert and the layman. The planner knows the nature of their package but the consumer learns because of their need. Similarly, the expert knows the facts underlying a subject while the layman learns through experience. He says that in the learning environment the instructor has the role to “help the student to come to himself not as a consumer of experience but as a sovereign individual” (8). This implies that although the teachers have the role of delivering the academic package to the students, they have to empower them with the skills of research to be sources themselves rather than depend on other sources of knowledge. The learning process thus depends on the theoretical package as well as the sovereignty of the students in conducting personal research and knowledge synthesis in the learning process. In essence, Percy is of the opinion that dependency on prepackage ideas on any issue hinders the ability of a person to unveil the beauty of an object. In conclusion, Percy’s story “loss of the creature” is an inspiring piece that provides the motivation of mind independence. It illustrates vividly how the preformed images influence the way people perceive objects. The image of a creature is lost when people transmit subjective images of the creature to others. For instance, teachers teach what they think is crucial in class and hence students have to conform to this knowledge. Only mind independence can help the students to learn the nature of the object, or the tourist to see the beauty of scenery. Thus, Percy encourages the society to learn to be independent minded and to judge the beauty of things from their true value rather than by the images formed in their minds about the object. Works Cited Percy, Walker. Loss of the Creature. Accessed from :< http://www.udel.edu/anthro/ ackerman/loss_creature.pdf> [accessed on 12th Feb, 2014] Read More