Walker's essay seems to suggest that we live to discover the symbolism of life and unravel it's complexities by actively seeking them out.

Walker Percy's essay, "The Loss of Creature" maintains that we should "recover the creature" and learn to "extract the thing from the package." However, we can never exclusively recover the creature from the "symbolic package," for we are in a process of continuous discovery throughout our lives and we must see the symbolic complex for more than it appears to be. Percy's methods of perceiving the world are in fact impossible to put into effect for we could not go about placing ourselves into natural disasters and things of the like. Furthermore, that would be defeating the purpose, for once we set out to recover the lost creature, intentionally looking for "it", "it" is lost. However, that does not prevent us from learning something from Percy's methods of "recovering the creature." In his essay, Percy maintains that the reclamation "it" and education's "unspoiled beauty" is endeavored by many, both by following the beaten path and also by seeking another path away from the prevailing trail of tradition.

James Campbell Percy and friends

Percy Williams of Canada (right) competing in the ...

Percy Williams of Canada on the shoulders of his t...

By embracing Walker's methods of observation we open our minds.

Percy reflects upon the dialectic approach of allowing oneself to see something familiar for the first time, be it a picturesque view of the Grand Canyon, a tiny Indian village, or a dogfish. (The dialectic view being the viewpoint of many, employing the method of seeing an issue from many perspectives, rather than a singular stance.) Walker Percy asserts that there exists the same amount of wonder and beauty within a dogfish as there is in a Shakespearean sonnet. It depends merely upon the approach of one's mind. When encountering something for the first time, or the twentieth, utilizing Walker's manner of the "dialectic view" allows us to break away from the "symbolic complex which has already been formed in the...