The question of whether or not writing and language can capture experience is a tough question to answer. In my opinion, a reader can capture some sort of experience through writing and language. However, the reader won’t have the same experience as the author because the reader will lack the feelings that the author had felt during whatever experience. To me, experience is mostly feeling. It is what went through a person’s mind during that particular moment. That feeling, that idea that crossed the person’s mind is the experience. For example, in the Lone Survivor the reader gets a great idea of what Marcus Luttrell’s emotions, ideas, and thoughts were during his time in Iraq but the readers will never know his thoughts at every moment. We will never know exactly what crossed his mind when he realized he was the only survivor of his Navy SEAL team. We will never know what exactly his body felt like, or the pain he went through. Yes, we can image and develop a general understanding from reading his book, but we can’t say that we have had the same experience as Luttrell. The reader can have an experience while reading a book such as Lone Survivor. They would have ideas and emotion’s that cross their head while scanning the words, but it would be an experience unique to that person.
If two people are reading the same book, like the example before with Lone Survivor, they will have two completely different experiences. A person’s experience comes from their previous experiences, their ideas, thoughts; everything about the person can affect their experience. This is why I think that the experience that an author would want to share with his or her readers will never be portrayed exactly as they felt it the first time. The overall idea can be shared, but never the whole experience. The ideas, feelings and emotions that are unique to an individual also make experiences unique and unreplicable.
My boyfriend and I recently went to Mexico, just the two of us. We spent every waking moment together, at tours, swimming on the beach, enjoying the nearby town but when somebody asks us how our trip was, we both answer in two completely different ways. I say “oh it was great! I loved the beach.” When my boyfriend answers he takes more of an anthropological approach and talks about the poverty and the people in the area that we visited. We had the exact vacation, but we have two different experiences. Mine, mainly on a sunny beach, and Nick’s was more of a field study on the local people. Even though we basically had the same vacation, our experiences are totally different. To me, it is the same if reading a book. Two of the same people read the same book, and they have two separate experiences on the book. Separate feelings, separate ideas crossed their minds while reading, so an experience can’t be duplicated.
I think the problem that I am having about this topic, is imaging two people having an exact experience. We really will never know what any other person is feeling at a particular moment or what they had felt during a particular time. They may tell or try us or write a book on it, and we may understand it but we will never know the exact experience that person had because there is no way to duplicate every emotion that a person felt during that time and emotion is a large part of experience. I could right a book about being in a tornado on my sister birthday, and having my dad almost die from our house collapsing, but none of you could ever have the experience that I had by reading a book. You can’t duplicate the feelings I had at that particular moment when I heard the front of my house collapse. I don’t think I could even express every emotion I felt into words. People can understand, and get an idea of the experience that an author is trying to depict, but it is almost like trying to create an experience without actually having it.
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I have to agree with Christine that while readers have an experience when reading a book they do not have the same experience as the author, nor as any other reader. So, to the question, "can words capture the enormity of experience?” I would say no. Still, I don't think this is a fair question because there is an obvious answer that I think most people would jump to and that answer is no words cannot capture the enormity of experience. Instead, I think it is more important to consider the types of experience readers do have and what exactly constitutes experience.
ReplyDeleteMy first inclination is to break experience down into mental experience and physical experience. When Christine mentions the Tornado toppling the front half of her house that was no doubt a physical experience as in her and her family where there, in the moment, feeling the destructive power of a tornado. When we read about this in her blog post we don't feel the winds blowing; all we can do is imagine how terrifying and catastrophic this would feel. This is a much more mental experience than actually being there. Nonetheless there is no denying this is an experience.
Another distinction that could be made with experience is the break down between subjective and objective. I think in some ways experience is entirely subjective, as in that whatever an individual already has as an identity directly effects how they see and experience the world. On the other hand, there are something’s that people all experience the same way; such as hunger, the prick of a needle and the terrain beneath our feet. What is different is how we interpret these experiences. For example a young child is going to squirm and cry when given a shot, but an adult may do nothing more than cringe their teeth. This leads back to the distinction between physical and mental experiences; the prick of a needle is physical, but the interpretation of that prick is mental. So, to break it down experience is physical and objective, but also mental and subjective.
The inherent problem with this question is that experience must be defined before we can determine if it can be captured. The problem with defining experience is that it is enormous; in just a few paragraphs I have identified multiple factors that can determine an individuals experience. If we ignore the variation in how individuals interpret experiences then yes we can define experience. But, this is unrealistic because there are so many different people with so many different backgrounds who undoubtedly interpret their physical experiences in different ways. Therefore I would say words cannot capture the enormity of experience because experience cannot be defined due to its enormity.