Summary Of Percy's The Loss Of The Creature

In Percy's essay The Loss of the Creature, he talks about the sightseer in the Grand Canyon. When looked up in the dictionary, a sightseer is a tourist who is visiting sights of interest. A sightseer can also be described as one given to seeing sights or noted things. This is important because in the essay, Percy talks about the value P and that if the Grand Canyon "is seen by a million sightseers, a single sightseer does not receive value P but a millionth part of value P". The sightseer is the one who perceives the Grand Canyon and will receive a certain amount of value P from that of the Spanish explorer. However, he cannot see the Grand Canyon for what it is when he perceives it according to the symbolic complex in his mind.
The "sovereignty "of which Percy speaks of in the essay is the right of seeing and knowing. When the sightseer arrives at the canyon, he "waives his right of seeing and knowing and records symbols for the next forty years". The sightseer does not confront the canyon like Percy says; he takes pictures of it instead. By doing so, he has, in a way, surrendered himself (like the majority of the tourists) to the symbolic complex in his mind.
The symbolic complex in the essay is the expectations, a sort of picture that the sightseer has in his mind of the Grand Canyon.
This is why the sightseer cannot see the Grand Canyon it for what it is. Rather, when the sightseer goes to visit the canyon, already he is expecting to see certain aspects of the canyon that he has seen in picture postcards, geography book, tourist folders, and the like. He is not delighted or amused from "a progressive discovery of depths, patterns, colors, shadows, etc." but "measures his satisfaction by the degree to which the canyon conforms to the preformed complex". His need to preserve the "memory" of the canyon disallows him to fully appreciate the
canyon.
How does one avoid surrendering to their symbolic complex and actually "see" the Grand Canyon? There are three stratagems that Percy mentions which can enable the sightseer recover the canyon: by leaving the beaten track, by dialectical movement, and by accidental encounter. How can you leave the beaten path? By "avoiding all the facilities for seeing the canyon". Leave the tour, camp in the back country. Arise before dawn and approach the South Rim through a wild terrain where there are no trails and no railed-in lookout points. By doing this, the sightseer will experience the canyon differently. There will be no symbolic complex to draw boundaries in which to retain him. It can also be recovered by dialectical movement. This can be done when the sightseer avoids the beaten track and guided tours for a long time and then deliberately seeks out the most beaten track of all. "The thing is recovered from familiarity by means of an exercise in familiarity". Because he is so familiar with the canyon, so accustomed to it, he can stand behind the tourists at the Bright Angel Lodge and "see the canyon through them and their predicament, their picture taking and busy disregard." By doing so, he recovers his sovereignty once more.
The "it" that Percy mentions in his essay is not exactly defined. However, it can be assumed by the context that "it" refers to the certain experience that one may receive according to the symbolic complex. For example, when someone sees the Grand Canyon and it measures up to their expectations of what it should look like, they say "this is it". "The present experience is always measured by a prototype, the ‘it' of their dreams."
The planner and the experts are the ones who create the symbolic complex for the layman. They are the ones that write the textbooks, set the rules, state theories, and so forth. They do not create the symbolic complex intentionally, but the layman seer of sights surrenders his sovereignty to them. For example, if a person was to pick up a certain object, that person would bring it to the expert. The expert would then certify it as "genuine" and the layman is happy because the expert was satisfied with the find. Everything has to go through to the planners and experts in order for it to be "correct" or "genuine". Percy states, "Their basic placement in the world is such that they recognize a priority of title of the expert over his particular department of being. The whole horizon of being is staked out by ‘them,' the experts."
"Discovery" is when one is not affected at all by any symbolic complex that might try to hide the creature from that individual. That individual can see the Grand Canyon as it is. There is no symbolic complex or experts to tell him how to see it. "Where the wonder and delight of the Spaniard arose from his penetration of the thing itself, from a progressive discovery of the depths, patterns, colors, shadows, etc." means that the Spaniard who discovered the Grand Canyon was observant of all these things and absorbed the Grand Canyon with no distractions such as the symbolic complex.
"Recovery" is similar to discovery in a sense that one sees the Grand Canyon for what it is. The difference between the two is when. The individual at first may have been affected by the symbolic complex; he may have had a hard time seeing the canyon. But after leaving the beaten track or by dialectical movement, he "recovers" the canyon and finally is able to actually see it.

Percy, Walker. "The Loss of the Creature." Ways of Reading. Eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.