Walker Percy’s “The loss of a creature”
Walker Percy’s “The loss of a creature” is an essay that explores how the perception of the world seems to have changed over time. The writer explores how the experiences of Garcia López de Cárdenas in the Grand Canyon no longer seem to be the same for people who visit the place in the current days. Percy argues that the only person who got to experience the Grand Canyon for what it really is was the one who discovered it. However, once the government turned it into a national park, it became government property and commercial land, thus losing its essence of sovereignty that people could go and enjoy at will. Besides, this change in the status of the Grand Canyon also made it lose its symbolism as it is now viewed as a criterion for the preformed symbolic complex. Notably, this has been occasioned by the fact that people seem to be only going for the memories and take photographs that impact the perception of visitors through the pictures, postcards, and travel brochures. This analogy can be compared to the loss of identity as one only gets to have what may be false experiences. Percy asserts that understanding can only be realized through one’s authentic experience. Just like in the Grand Canyon, one can only get to know the true identity of a person if they get rid of all the prejudices and social biases that they already formed about them.
The loss of the splendor of the Grand Canyon in the essay can be compared to how one loses their sovereignty and identity. In the first page, Percy asserts that “The assumption is that the Grand Canyon is a remarkably interesting and beautiful place and that if it had a certain value P for Cárdenas, the same value P might be transmitted to any number of sightseer…” This assertion underscores how prejudices are created that make people lose their true identities in social expectations. As one has an already formed idea about what society expects from them, they seem to be caught up in reaching these expectations and forget about finding their true selves. This can be compared to how people go to the Grand Canyon with the formed perception of the picturesque place that they see on posters and pictures, and may only visit the place to confirm these preformed perceptions. A different experience is likely to lead to boredom. Percy, therefore, states that if one has to regain their sovereignty, especially when visiting the Canyon, they ought to go without their cameras. By so doing, they would be able to get the authentic experience of the Grand Canyon like Garcia López de Cárdenas did.
In conclusion, “The Loss of a Creature” underscores a problem that is experienced in the modern world where people seem to be more preoccupied with capturing moments than experiencing them. The fact that people go to the Canyon with preformed opinions based on the pictures they see on posters implies that they do not get to experience it as authentically as Garcia López de Cárdenas did. This is because the explorer got to see it in its splendor way before it was commercialized, and no pictures were available to impact his opinion of the place. Therefore, to regain the identity and sovereignty of their experiences, Percy suggests that people should try to visit the place without their cameras.