The Loss of the Creature by Walker Percy

1062 Words3 Pages

In today’s culture people are not individuals they are consumers and they have lost their ability to have their own experiences. In “The Loss of the Creature” by Walker Percy, he talks about why people have lost their sovereignty and how they can get it back. There are a lot of things that people can do differently and regain their individuality back from the consumer culture that they live in.
The biggest and probably easiest way to regain sovereignty is to go somewhere without a camera. The key is to be living in the moment. As Percy says, “for [the sightseer] there is no present; there is only the past and what has been formulated and seen and the future of what has been formulated and not seen” (460). The sightseer does not realize that if taking a picture is their first and/or only priority it takes away their ability to really see whatever they are looking at. They are too caught up in saving the sight for a later date or to share with others in order to verify their experience. Go somewhere with no expectations, no plan, and most importantly no camera and see how different an experience can be. How people “conceive [their] role” as a tourist has a huge impact on how they perceive what they are seeing (462). That’s why it is important to go somewhere just for the sake of going. They need to book a flight to a location they know nothing about and hotel that is not part of a big chain and without reading the reviews. Then they just need to go! Once they are there they will realize that if they actually talk to some of the people who live there or just take a walk around they will experience that area for what it really is.
Those changes will break the packaging of it all. The travel experience needs to be unpackaged so that ...

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...ontrol that, not someone on the other side of the screen.
The current world has so many packages that most people do not even realize they are missing out on something. Percy tries to open everyone’s eyes to why these packages need to be taken apart and ways to go about doing it. Things like travel, organized sports, self-help books, and social media all take away a person’s ability to live their own lives freely as they choose. The packages that are put in front of people look so appealing that they jump to have them, not even think about what they are losing. Everyone deserves to be a sovereign individual who learns, lives, and dreams all on their own. No one needs to organize it for them or verify their experiences. They have the ability to live a successful life all on their own. As soon as people fight to break free from the packages they get their lives back.

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The Loss of the Creature by Walker Percy

The Loss of Creature by Walker Percy