Walker Percy Essays (Examples)

Lost in the Cosmos: A self-Help book review

Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by alker Percy is a psychology-based "self-help" book that turns the genre on its head by approaching the individual from a unique perspective. Percy's viewpoint is that is actually healthier to feel that something is wrong with oneself than to feel that one is perfectly fine. The primary aim of the book is not so much to provide self-help to the reader as it is to explore the mystery of human nature and the world around us. The idea of sensing that something is wrong is rooted in the Judeo-Christian perspective that Percy utilizes to convey a sense or longing for fulfillment, redemption, salvation, etc. By addressing an audience that looks for a psychological solution (or a solution to life's problems via a psychological channel), Percy attempts to guide the reader through a series…

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…

Loss of the Creature

Notice how Rembrandt employed chiaroscuro in his works," began my art history professor. "His technique revolutionized the way that artists portrayed sources of light on the canvas." glanced around me. About twenty students sat neatly behind their desks, faces illuminated eerily by the glow of the overhead projector. The scene was ironic: our professor trying to convey an understanding of chiaroscuro through a painting done five centuries ago, when right before our eyes was a true example of the contrast between light and shadow. Art history is an arena in which the "loss of the creature" is felt most profoundly. In his essay "The Loss of the Creature," Walker Percy notes that biology students are removed twofold from their subjects of study, first by layers of packaging, of labels and names, and second by a confounded array of theories. Similarly, any classroom discussion of art fails…

This fact certainly holds true for Ehrlich, who purposefully moved to Wyoming, which some have labeled as one of the least populated states, to get away from an urban existence of overly similar familiarities. This experience is the basis for "The Solace of Open Spaces," in which she plunges into a world of natural life and hardship primarily to deal with the death of a lover. However, by immersing herself in an experience that is wholly foreign to her and her previous form of existence, she is able to gain the much needed solace she was looking for, while also recovering her sense of self and her subjective perspective with which to view the world from afresh.

This motif of escaping the literal, physical trappings of daily existence to enter into a new mind state in which to view one's self and regain one's subjectivity is evinced within Dillard's "Total…

Histoy of the Poblem

Rachel Evans (2011) lists a numbe of nutitional theapies fo the teatment of depession, anging fom St. John's Wot to "dan zhi xiao yao, a taditional Chinese medicine." Altenative medicine has often been seen as a supplement to the teatment of depession in the past. Othe teatments have included the famous lobotomy technique designed by Potuguese neuologist Antonio Egas Moniz, who was awaded the Nobel Pize fo his technique. Moniz simply dilled and snipped "neve fibes unning fom the fontal lobes to the est of the bain" (Lene, 2005). And Kyziidis identifies seveal ways in which the ancient Geeks would appoach mental illness such as depession:

"Ciceo…believed that man could help with his own cue though philosophy" (p. 43). Even today thee ae numeous studies that still show how physicians ely on phamaceuticals to estoe balance in a patient suffeing fom depession: Pevention of depends upon…

Rosie to Lucy

An Analysis of Today's TV Sitcom, Media, and Reality

As is noted in "From Rosie to Lucy," Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique was, to some extent, concerned about the image of woman as presented by the mass media. hat Friedan reported was a kind of transformation from the woman of the 30s in magazines like Ladies Home Journal into the woman of the 50s -- the kind of hare-brained ditz of I Love Lucy. This paper will look at that relationship that struck Friedan so forcefully -- the relationship between media and reality -- and it will also argue that media tends to manipulate gender codes.

hat Friedan observed in the magazines of the 30s showed a professional woman much like the nurses of Florence Nightingale's nurse corps. She was devoted to an activity that was respected and needed. hat Friedan observed in the television sitcoms of…

ecruitment and Selection Techniques contribute to the Success of an Organization

ecruitment is a form of business contest and it is fiercely competitive. Organizations have to be strategic in order to attract and retain top talent to positions in the company. Competition between companies have become even more fierce and companies are doing all that they can to get the best talent for their organizations. Hence, it is important to have a well-defined recruitment policy in place, which can be executed effectively to get the best fits for the vacant positions. Selecting the wrong candidate or rejecting the right candidate could turn out to be costly mistakes for the organization. Companies understand that having the right people will definitely be difference between success and failure. ecruitment and selection is an ongoing process (Wilson, 2013). Businesses determine the present and future requirement of the organization and increase the success rate of…

Poe, Fall of the House of Usher

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is perhaps the best-known American entry into the genre of Romantic and Gothic tale, yet it is worth asking what elements actually identify it as such. Spitzer describes the level of Gothic excess here:

Roderick and Madeline, twins chained to each other by incestuous love, suffering separately but dying together, represent the male and the female principle in that decaying family whose members, by the law of sterility and destruction which rules them, must exterminate each other; Roderick has buried his sister alive, but the revived Madeline will bury Roderick under her falling body. The "fall" of the House of Usher involves not only the physical fall of the mansion, but the physical and moral fall of the two protagonists. (Spitzer 352).

To a certain degree, this marks Poe's story out for particular…

Each author subsisted to two (2) different kinds of perspectives, which make up the second and third critical elements of the comparative analysis component of this paper.

Berger analyzed humor based on social and political perspectives. Usage of these perspectives was most useful in discussing the two typologies of humor he thoroughly discussed in the book: satire and folly. Satire as a type of humor drew upon important concept that makes up its core: "militant irony" (158-9). Folly, meanwhile, was best characterized through the concepts "absurd" and "reality in a looking glass" (176).

Satire gives humor a political aspect to it, as illustrated in the term "military irony," which Berger defined as "a term derived from war, it is an attitude of attack that is part of a campaign against someone or something." Interestingly, the author qualified that satire need not have the 'brutality' that comes with military irony; however,…

Traditional Interpretation of Images: Class Stratification in John erger's Ways of Seeing and Sexual Politics in Susan ordo's Hunger as Ideology

The proliferation of popular or mass culture following after the emergence of the Industrial Revolution in 19th century gave birth to new ideologies that seek to understand how these new social phenomena (pop culture and industrialization/capitalism) affected the life of human society over the years. One of the most popular theories that developed in light of the Industrial Revolution is the critical theory perspective, which posits that in the society, there will always be an existing conflict between the elite or bourgeois and middle class/working or proletariat classes. Indeed, this stratification in terms of race, class, gender, and even religion has become the focus of modern studies nowadays. John erger and Susan ordo, adopting the classical Marxist approach, attempted to analyze how popular culture has affected human society, and…

Recognizing that the film's title functions on both of these levels is important because it reveals how Alfredson deploys common vampire tropes in novel ways which serve to elevate the emotional content of the film, so that the "rules" surrounding vampires become metaphors for the emotional development both characters undergo. Thus, following Hakan's death, Eli goes to Oscar and he invites her into his room at the same moment that she implicitly invites him into her life, revealing to him the first explicit hints that she is something other than a twelve-year-old girl. From this point on, the two work to protect and comfort each other while providing each other with the confidence and companionship they need in order to be happy. Oscar confronts his bullies, and after a period of initial unhappiness, Eli gains a friend who accepts her as a vampire.

Though Eli initially has far more agency…