When people read books the language affects them differently, which is what the portrayal of a situation would do too. The effect is different on different people, which is why it is new to every person. Regardless of how well written or how well described the experience being written about is, the reader will never have been in that moment, so they will never truly feel the same way as in the moment described. The reader will get a good idea of what happened, I
think the description would be good. But is reading about a feeling the same as feeling it? No.
If a person is just starting to fall in love with someone and decided to write about all of the butterflies and the feelings, the reader would not be getting butterflies but they would be reading about how it felt. There is a big difference.
To truly be able to capture the enormity of an experience, the reader must be able to experience and feel the same things as what is being portrayed. But that is not realistic. Consider a photograph. When you see the most beautiful and incredible view in a photo, what do you feel? You feel multiple things that the person who took it felt, but you will never feel your breath taken away in that moment, you will not feel how calming it is. There is a big difference. A photograph can say a lot, and according to most it is worth "a thousand words", but words cannot provide you with that true and authentic feeling of actually being in that moment being described.
Looking to an example, Marcus Latrell's "Lone Survivor", he gives an excellent account of what happened in Afghanistan and explained every little detail to perfection. But if you were in his situation, how would you have felt? A reader is capable of being scared and feeling excited by what is happening in a text, but what if you were face to face on a mountain side in Afghanistan with people who are your enemies and have the power to hurt you? How would you feel? You would be scared out of your mind, and that is not necessarily something that a written experience can provide you.
I think language can do a great deal in describing and trying to portray a situation, but it will never be capable of grasping the enormity of an experience fully.
I agree with nearly every point made in this blog post. It is pointed out first and foremost that language indeed does not capture the enormity of experience, but rather that it provides “a new experience all together”. This is entirely true. To truly “capture” the enormity of an experience, all tangible human senses must be included. Take for example a soldier in the midst of a gun fight with a hostile enemy insurgency. The sight of enemy combatants attempting to take out your fellow men, the sound of machine guns firing, the feeling of adrenaline rushing through your veins, the smell of the sweat dripping down you neck are all contributors to an experience that cannot be fully replicated or captured by spoken language or words written on a piece of paper. Like pointed out in the post, language has the ability to “provide you with insight to what the person was going through”, although it “cannot put you there in that moment”. While it is true that language cannot fully replicate the enormity of experience, it was never meant or expected to. Language and words were first very useful for keeping records of history in attempt to educate future generations of events experienced by past members of these generations. It was understood that these words that were passed down would never be able to capture the same feeling that the initial experience conveyed, but rather that they would be used as a tool to inform and give their audience an idea of the happening.
ReplyDeleteThe above poster also uses the example of viewing a beautiful photograph to explain the limitations of trying to recreate an experience when not “in the moment”. This example stirs nostalgia of the summers that my family and I spent camping in Montana and South Dakota. During our various trips, my mother made the note to keep a journal of the day to day experiences that we had. Looking back, the journals that she kept do help me to remember the various experiences that I had, but they in no way replace or even come close to replacing the things that I felt when I first experienced them. Reading about one of our treks to a glacial lake for fly fishing definitely stirs memories, but the way I felt as storm clouds began to form and lighting streaked across the sky will never come close to being replicated. It’s for this reason that we continued to camp out in those western states summer after summer. If language would have sufficed to capture the enormity of what we had experienced when we were on vacation, there would have been no need to continue camping year after year.
Again, while the use of language and words do not entirely capture the enormity of experience, in its defense, they were never intended to in the first place. Like the poster above states, any hopes of this being the case are simply not realistic. Nothing comes close to experiencing something in the moment, whether it be a book, poem, or picture, and in all likelihood, nothing ever will.
I agree with you that language doesn’t fully capture the enormity of experience. No matter how many books on flying airplanes a person reads he’s not going to really know what it’s like to fly without actually doing it. Words alone aren’t enough to replicate physical experience, but they can accurately describe it. However even if every detail of an event is disclosed, the effect that description has on a reader will always be entirely different from that of someone who was actually there to experience it. This is largely due to reading being a linear activity while experiencing something in person is always more dimensional. Doing something or being somewhere in person can involve a combination of different emotions and senses like touch, sight, and smell that can all be felt at the same time. That same event written down can only be “experienced” by a reader one word at a time. This is something that writers have to take into account when they write. Since they can’t make a reader feel the same way they did when they went through the experience, what they write will be a new experience for the reader like you said.
ReplyDeleteI like your analogy of a photograph vs. actually being there because it shows that even something as clear as a photo doesn’t capture what it’s like to be there since it’s a limited medium just like words and language are. A picture may very well be “worth a thousand words” but as discussed earlier words aren’t the same as being where the photo was taken. The same could be said about a video. A motion picture can capture the sights and sounds of an area but it’s still not the same as actually being where the camera is because other senses are left out. Being on the streets in London is a completely different and more full experience than watching videos of the traffic in London on Youtube.
Language or any other media can be very descriptive of an experience, but they don’t capture the enormity of it. The best an author can do is show what an experience is like but he’ll never be able to make the readers feel the same way he felt.