Percy Walker Essay
Purpose: To tell the audience about the importance of preserving their ability to think and the ability to perceive things in their own way
Audience: The juniors taking this class next year
The ability to think and the ability to perceive what we think is not a privilege but a right. You made choices in your life that you though were entirely by yourself, but according to Percy Walker you did not make the choices alone. Percy Walker states in his essay, “The Loss of a Creature”, that almost every experience that we have done was influenced in one way or another. That includes the experience, expectations, and the purpose. Percy uses an experience at the Grand Canyon to explain how an experience is influenced by society and because of that the person cannot receive the full experience. Percy states “The assumption is that the Grand Canyon is a remarkably interesting and beautiful place and that if it had certain value P for Cardenas, …By a million sightseers, a single sightseer does not receive value p but a Millionth part of value P.”(pg 1 Paragraph 3). This quote is saying that seeing the Grand Canyon without any expectations high or low is the only way that one can have a truly unique experience because they are discovering the beauty of it by themselves and with any other opinions to influence them. Later on in the essay, Percy describes a couple and their search for “it”, which is an authentic experience in Mexico. He goes on saying that the couple finds a Rain festival put on by natives and how the couple supposedly found “it” there. They end up bring an expert in Mexican Culture just to confirm that they had found “it”. Percy explains how bringing that expert and not paying attention to his information, but just to confirm that their trip was authentic ruined their trip. Now, if the couple just went with the flow and brought their expert just to let him experience the trip it would be fine, but they ruined it by a having a preconceived notion of what
Audience: The juniors taking this class next year
The ability to think and the ability to perceive what we think is not a privilege but a right. You made choices in your life that you though were entirely by yourself, but according to Percy Walker you did not make the choices alone. Percy Walker states in his essay, “The Loss of a Creature”, that almost every experience that we have done was influenced in one way or another. That includes the experience, expectations, and the purpose. Percy uses an experience at the Grand Canyon to explain how an experience is influenced by society and because of that the person cannot receive the full experience. Percy states “The assumption is that the Grand Canyon is a remarkably interesting and beautiful place and that if it had certain value P for Cardenas, …By a million sightseers, a single sightseer does not receive value p but a Millionth part of value P.”(pg 1 Paragraph 3). This quote is saying that seeing the Grand Canyon without any expectations high or low is the only way that one can have a truly unique experience because they are discovering the beauty of it by themselves and with any other opinions to influence them. Later on in the essay, Percy describes a couple and their search for “it”, which is an authentic experience in Mexico. He goes on saying that the couple finds a Rain festival put on by natives and how the couple supposedly found “it” there. They end up bring an expert in Mexican Culture just to confirm that they had found “it”. Percy explains how bringing that expert and not paying attention to his information, but just to confirm that their trip was authentic ruined their trip. Now, if the couple just went with the flow and brought their expert just to let him experience the trip it would be fine, but they ruined it by a having a preconceived notion of what