I used to look at a postcard of Cinderella's Castle in Disney World as an exciting memory of the fun times I had in Disney World. This postcard would spark exuberant memories of the thrilling times I had on my trip to Disney making my "seeing" of Cinderella's castle most memorable and important to me. I assumed most everyone enjoyed a postcard, but writers Annie Dillard, Walker Percy, and John Berger contradict the simplicity of a postcard making it far more arduous. Dillard, Percy, and Berger would probably all agree in saying that these postcards are a site being obscured by intricately edited photographs, conceptions, and over-exaggeration of what the site entails to actually be. These writers refer to these postcards as forming unnecessary inaccurate preconceived notions that upset their own personal experience. While they are right about the disappointment of the preconceived notion, they seem to forget the memories and personal excitement that make their personal post-conceived notion of these postcards so great. .
Walker Percy, in his essay The Loss of the Creature establishes that preconceived notions formed by items such as postcards ruin a person's experience of the Grand Canyon. Postcards give the viewer an image in their mind of what they expect the Grand Canyon to be, it must look like the postcard. As he explains in his essay: .
"Seeing the Canyon under approved circumstances is seeing the symbolic complex head on. The thing is no longer that as it confronted the Spaniard; it is rather that which has already been formulated by picture postcards, geography books, tourist folders, and the words Grand Canyon." (Percy 424).
While Percy assumes that postcards are a form of pre-formulation, obstructing the view of the Grand Canyon, he is surely putting to little faith in the people approaching this site. He marks the human race with the title "Symbolic Complex" presuming rather haughtily that a person belittles the experience of the Grand Canyon simply comparing it to a postcard in his mind and deciding if it compares or doesn't.
