In a way, I was trying to live their experiences and see the astoundment of the Taj Mahal through their eyes. But because of the humid weather and crowded population, my experience did not live up to my envisionment. Percy explains that when people focus on “prepackaged notions” of what something should be, they lose the probability of a bona fide experience. Through The Loss of the Creature, Percy encourages readers to both recognize the package, and reject it.
People often try to make situations go as planned because they have a subconscious desire for it to be “authentic”. In The Loss of the Creature, Percy focused on travelers’ experiences with the Grand Canyon. Percy implies that people measure their satisfaction of experiencing the Canyon by comparing their experience with their preformed complex, or expectations, of what their experience should be. A person’s preformed complex is first aroused during their initial introduction to the Grand Canyon. From that point on, they slowly build an expectation of the experience based off of pictures, others’ recollections, and personal