Discovery in Walker Percy\'s \"The

Discovery in Walker Percy's "The Loss of the Creature"

The title of this essay speaks for itself. Indeed, what this essay contains is my won discovery of the Creature that Walker Percy identifies in "The Loss of the Creature." My discovery of the Creature was by reading through three essays that I consider enlightening in my own pursuit of the Creature. What make these essays enlightening to me is that they allowed me to look discover the Creature as it was 'seen' by the eyes of other people. The texts that follow are my own insights, reflections and ratings of the essays that made me discover people's 'discovery' of the Creature.

I have chosen three essays and rated them from one to three, where one represents a rating of "best," the essay that had provided the most insightful discussion of Percy's essay. Among the essays, I rated as top 3 "Monkey Management," which talks about a student's experience of having discovered the Creature through his Management class. The essay provides the reader a brief description of what the class was all about (Management) and detailed account of the class proper itself, how the professor conducts every class meeting, and what have the student's learned after class meetings and the course itself.

Monkey" is a respite from the numerous essays I have read about finding or looking for the Creature within the walls of their classrooms. The author's perspective is fresh; in fact, I find it surprising that, at last, here is one essay which has something positive to say about his educational experience. This surprise is elevated further due to the fact that the class the author mentions is a Management class, a course that is highly theoretical and, from a student's point-of-view, simply boring.

The author changed all these stereotypes of what the typical classroom setting should be. Or rather, the essay has changed the way a student's attitude should be towards education and learning. The essay has become insightful for me based on two points. The first point is what I have mentioned earlier: the essay provided a fresh look at how student's attitude should be towards education and learning. This is, for me, the most important step that any individual (student or otherwise) should do once they set out to discover the Creature. The author of the essay kept an open mind and welcomed the experience from the start; perhaps the fact that it was the author's first time to attend a Management class made the experience more interesting for the author. Thus, threading through the class, anticipating the unknown, is what made the author appreciate and in the process, discover the Creature.

The second point that made "Monkey" insightful is the fact that there is an evidence of interaction between the professor and his students. That is, the professor conducted his class and taught his students without losing the "sovereignty" of the students. This set-up reminds me of Paulo Freire's thoughts on the supposed oppression of the students by the teacher, which happens when there is no interaction and dialogue, between the teacher and his or her students.

These two factors, that is, the presence of a fresh outlook towards learning and the presence of interactive dialogue between the teacher and students made "Monkey Management" a worthwhile read about discovering other people's discovery of the Creature.

Finding the Creature" is at the top 2 of my list of the most insightful essays I have read about discovering the Creature. Contrary to "Monkey," this essay expressed disappointment about the author's failure to find the Creature. The setting was similar to the "Monkey"s setting: the search for finding the Creature was set inside the classroom, and as expected, the teacher became the villain, the culprit the author points to as the main cause for his failure to discover the Creature and experience this 'discovery.'

The class: American Labor History. The students: 13 diesel mechanic majors and the author. This extraordinary combination of students makes the plot for the author's story of his quest for the Creature interesting. The question that lingered in my mind is, "would the author discover the Creature in this setting, where a seemingly boring and highly textual (based on readings of books and historical documents) course mingles with the practical mindset of the students (being mostly composed of diesel mechanics majors)?" suddenly discovered that, through a second reading of the essay, I am also (like the author) trying to discover the Creature. Adopting the first author's ("Monkey Management") fresh perspective about his Management class, I also tried to envision myself as the author/student in "Finding," who is now facing the challenge of discovering the Creature in his class. Given my flexible nature and open-minded outlook in experiencing new challenges, I supposed that in "Finding," I would become interested on the fact that the class will become extraordinary given the conflicting nature of the course and the students. Thus, I would envision myself as a spectator who is always on the look-out of possible clashes that may happen between the teacher and my classmates. Of course, I will not become a passive audience to this mysterious class interaction: I will play my part as a student-discoverer-spectator, looking out for the Creature through my interaction with the teacher and my classmates as both a student and a spectator.

Of course, what happened to the author of "Finding" is what I had just expected, if applied in the real classroom setting. Indeed, the author found disappointment in the fact that majority of the students were not interested in the subject matter, worsened by the fact that the author observed that their teacher is not interested in teaching. The lack of interest in both parties (students and teacher) resulted to the loss of the Creature.

In my opinion, however, what happened is not a loss, but the rejection of the Creature. The author knows that there is much to be discovered, much to be learned about the course. Yet, the class environment hindered this. The people inside the class are unaware of the fact that the Creature lurks behind the formal set-up and discourse between the teacher and students. Only the author, who had endeavored to find the Creature, felt its loss and utter rejection. A thoughtful insight results from this experience: the author of "Finding" learned that in the real classroom setting, what prevails is not the Creature and everything it stands for, but the "manipulation" of the "material presented" in order to obtain the desired outcome of the class 'actors': for the students, their grade, and for the teacher, to get his/her job done for the semester.

The top essay about discovering the Creature in my list is Bronwyn Summers' essay. As a political science student, Summers have effectively expressed to his audience how the Creature is best experienced outside the confines of classrooms.

Summers' essay would have been similar to the others, and I could have bypassed his essay had I not read through the last part of his essay. In the last paragraph of his essay, Summers learned to make his failure over discovering the Creature into a triumph by looking for it outside the classroom. Summers is right; there are things that cannot be discovered and learned profoundly within the classroom, especially if, as in his case, the subject matter concerns "atoms," "cellular respiration," among others, facts and information given to students through "superficial" means.