Walker Percy’s the Loss of the Creature

Walker Percy’s “The Loss of the Creature” I and II

Walker Percy was a unique writer and it was clear to anyone that has read the essay “The Loss of the Creature.” It clearly shows that his outlook on things were a little different than most people’s. He likes to look at things more that just once and likes to look deep into things to get every piece of evidence out of what he is focusing on. This essay is also unique because it was split into two sections. It is almost like two different essays. I think that Percy had two different experiences of what he considers “The Loss of the Creature.” That is why he separated the two different stories and put them into one essay, with the title “The Loss of the Creature.” The essay reminds me of the last two essays that we read by Gloria Anzaldua, because the two sections are about two different subjects and in the end they are compared.

The first section was about people traveling to different places of interest and reflecting on them. For example, the family went to the Grand Canyon and heard so much about it before they went, but when they witnessed it themselves they saw what they had expected so their experience was not as great as someone that is witnessing it for the first time like Cardenas did. Also, everyone looks at things differently and what appeals to one person may not to another person.

Percy explained how the people that were traveling did not take a deep enough look into where they went. What he meant by this was how they missed several things and that even if the people thought that they had visited the place of interest, they really didn’t because there is so much more to these places than is noticed at first. I believe that everyone he talked about except the man who visited France experienced a loss. The man from France almost experienced a loss according to Percy, but as he was leaving the French restaurant he luckily witnessed the argument about the play. Percy explained how the visitor related this experience to Hemingway and said that he was only delighted because of his knowledge of Hemingway being of French decent. Therefore, this was not a loss of sovereignty.

The second section dealt with comparing and contrasting a high school biological science project of dissecting a dogfish and studying a sonnet from a Harvard sophomore poetry II class. I think that what Percy is trying to get at in this second section is to show that sometimes your losses can show you where you actually stand in society. Percy explains how there is a division between expert and layman, or planner and consumer. In his words he shows that in a society the expert and planner “know and plan”, while the layman and consumer “need and experience.” In my opinion, Percy is explaining that you are what you put yourself to as a person. For example, “The highest role of the educator is the maieutic role of Socrates: to help the student