Language is a very good way of being able to get across a person's ideas and beliefs to an audience, however when it comes to capturing the experience of a moment it falls short. While writing someone may be able to get across a general idea or tell a story to the reader, but the experience that the reader has can never be the same as the authors. The problem with trying to get a cross a certain experience is that unless you are actually there when it happens, it's very difficult to get others to share in that moment the same way that you did.
What language does do is give writers a way to describe and tell others about something that has happened to them. A writer is able to tell the emotions he or she felt at the time, and a personal reaction.. This is where language is not able to successfully create the same experience for another person. Someone reading what someone else went through will have a different experience because they are living it through someone else. This means that any experience you got out of reading something is based on the authors retelling of it, and not the actual event.
Everyone is different, including how they experience something. An example of two people going through the same event and having a different experience is a roller coaster ride. Some people are terrified to go on one while others love the thrill it gives them. These two people reacted differently and therefore would be influenced by their person experiences while reading about someone else's. If for example you read about someone who was terrified of a roller coaster and you loved them, you would have a hard time putting yourself in that person shoes and seeing it from their point of view.
Sometimes a person's beliefs just make it impossible to get across a certain experience. A personal experience that I have had that falls into this is when I shot my first buck which was a big 10 pointer. There are some people that are completely against hunting and killing animals, so no matter how I worded it, I would not be able to describe the experience that I had when I shot it tho this group of people. Even to people that have hunted or are fine with hunting, it would be hard for them to fully understand the experience I had when it happened. It was one of those moments that when asked about its hard to find the words to describe it. I could tell people about how excited I was when I first saw it and how suddenly I calmed down once it was in my cross hairs and how shaky I was for the couple of minutes after I shot it because of the adrenaline rushing through me. Even though I could tell people all of this, they would still not be able to get the experience I had or was trying to describe to them because they weren't there, didn't do what I did, and there aren't words t o describe this in great enough detail to allow another person to get the full effect.
With all of this evidence I do not think it is possible for language to be able to completely capture an experience. It can do a good job of telling others about an experience but it is unable to make the reader feel the same as if they had been there themselves.
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Hey all,
ReplyDeleteJake I cannot help but read your post and agree with the premise. While I feel that one cannot replicate events perfectly through literature, I believe literature draws upon our past experiences to evoke emotion. I think Marcus Lutrell’s work is a perfect example.
I am in no way a Navy Seal, take one look at me on a beach and you will be able to see why, and cannot even imagine what Navy Seal training and combat is like. Despite this lack of experience, somehow I was able to connect with Lutrell on an emotional level. While I have never ‘dropped and get sandy” or had to paddle in the surf, I can in some way picture the feeling in my mind. A few years ago, while I was in my athletic stage, I had the honor of playing in a flag football tournament. It was a ten team tournament and I would up playing every minute of every game. It wound up that our team had to play five games in on one of the scorching hot days that all you want to do is swim in a pool. The games were grueling and we won the tournament in front of my entire home crowd of 700 people. Not going to lie, it felt awesome. Now to make the vain and pathetic attempt to compare that day to Navy Seal training.
After the adrenaline and ecstasy had worn off, I was left physically and emotionally drained from the day’s events. When Lutrell was describing how physically, and emotionally taxing Navy Seal training was, I reverted to that day and extrapolated the emotions. While I am sure the varied range of emotions I felt that day do not even compare to how demanding Seal training is, in some way I was able to connect with Lutrell and sympathize with what he was feeling.
While I may have been making a stretch comparing a football tournament to an elite fighting force, I can unfortunately understand exactly how Lutrell felt when losing his men. I have lost loved ones and it is something that is almost impossible to get over. Lutrell’s seal team was a part of his family. This part of the text was very difficult to read and must have been almost impossible to write. Unfortunately I have lost an Uncle and a grandfather over the course of my life. It is very difficult to deal with loss and we often have trouble coming to grips with our emotions. Writing about the courage of his lost comrades must have in some way been therapeutic for Lutrell. The trauma of seeing your best friends killed before your eyes is something I hope to never experience.
Whether it is a traumatic event or a fun day on the beach, we draw upon our experience to understand stories. We have all told the funniest story about last night only to have nobody laugh. I encounter this on a daily basis. Anyway, this often occurs because the people cannot relate to whom we are discussing or the setting that it occurred. It is our past lives that we project on other people’s stories that evokes emotion. Literature does a great job of capturing that but cannot completely replicate it.
As I read your post, I could not help but agree that yes, language has the ability to depict a personal experience, but it is unable to fully describe the immensity of the moment and allow the audience to fully understand the emotions behind it. No matter how detailed of a description is given to the audience, no matter how many emotions are littered throughout the excerpt, no matter how similar of an experience one has had to the one being told, no one can truly understand the exactness of one’s own personal experience. Also, it seems that when an audience reads an author’s writing or hears someone speak about an experience, they are creating their own personal experience at that very moment while they are imagining that of another, as many of us have been moved or had a life changing realization through this means before. And then, when that audience member conveys their experience and emotions while reading an author’s writing or listening to an individual’s words to another person, this person, in turn, has a different personal experience too, building off of the first one, living through it vicariously as the first audience member did. It seems that language’s description of experiences allow for access to it, but cannot completely capture the experience fully as it continues to propel forward into a whole new one.
ReplyDeleteTake for example, this photo
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/photo.php?pid=44318810&id=8628813
I took this photo as I was exploring Lubenice, Croatia. The sun was setting on the small cliff-side town with the vast Adriatic Sea surrounding it. I stood on this cliff out-looking the sea, contemplating much about life. The emotions I felt standing there, realizing how lucky I was to be able to have this experience, realizing how thankful I was that I decided to take out another loan in order to experience this trip as I could never actually put a dollar amount on the amazing moments I experienced, realizing that I needed to travel and see as many places as I could throughout my life, realizing how much more there was in the world outside my tiny world in Wisconsin, realizing how truly beautiful life was, realizing decisions and goals that I wanted to make in my life, all came from standing at this very location. And those reflections are only the half of what went on in my head. It was a life changing moment for me and it is difficult to believe that anyone who I described my experience would truly understand that moment in my life. They may have some idea, but cannot understand the entirety of it, if they can even relate at all. I even tried to capture this moment in my life using a camera because I felt that this was the best way I could actually depict what I had seen that day, to allow someone to come as close as possible to understand what the experience was to me while describing it to them.
As one looks at my picture and reads my description of my experience, along with my thoughts and emotions, they may attempt to vicariously live the moment, as I know that I have often done for books and other writings that I have read or heard. One may understand my experience and the moment that I dwelled upon but will go on to formulate their thoughts and then their own experience through it. If someone takes interest to the experience of the story they have read, or heard for that matter, they are likely to pass it on to someone else. This explains how stories are often passed on from generation to generation through cultures. If language did not function this way, we would have no knowledge of the history of any place at any time or any thought, EVER. That is a pretty odd concept to digest, so thank goodness for language. As a current example, I feel like passing of stories continues through novels today. I have read many of “the classics” and I have found that they are called that for a reason. These are books in which the stories and messages are being passed down from generation to generation, reaching, pleasing, and still teaching many audiences. I realized this as I was home visiting; my dad commented on the fact that I was reading George Orwell's 1984. He told me about how he had read it when he was about my age, and we discussed the book too. Though we have an age difference, we both had the opportunity to read the same story as language has allowed us to pass this story around through time.
Although my father and I both read the same book, it more than likely ignited two different experiences for us. As people read and hear stories, they often have differing experiences because as one reads or listens, their own personal imaginations and emotions take over. Within an individual, these imaginative thoughts and consequent emotions are unique to the individual. This uniqueness occurs because everyone has their own set of experiences that have shaped them, their own passions, and their own personality causing experiences and descriptions to appeal differently. And these different appeals affecting their imaginative thoughts and emotions are what create this unique experience for the individual. For example, I know that I am more emotional than my dad. While Orwell described the relationship scenes and the character's thoughts about the girl he was seeing,I am sure this aspect of the book was probably more appealing to me than to him, successfully provoking my own thoughts as I cast myself into their relationship and related some instances to my own. This difference would cause us to have dissimilar experiences while reading the book, although we both had positive and influential ones.
As it seems, language IS essential for describing experiences, but only allows access to the experience. As one has access to this experience, they are then able to create their very own experiences, which in turn rely on an individual’s unique thought and emotional pattern. So without language, it seems as if much experience and the creation of a new experiences would be lost.