The Quote Impressed Me a Lot in the Loss of the Creature Is Once a Person Is Seen As A

Name: Jianwen Kang

Class: English 101

Professor: Professor Chocos

The quote impressed me a lot in the article "The Loss of the Creature" is " once a person is seen as a specimen of a race or a species, at that very moment he ceases to be an individual. Then there are no more individuals but only specimens."

What I think Percy was trying to express is that you can't take the part for the whole, one swallow doesn't make a summer. Sometimes people base their judgement on only a piece of information without knowing the whole story. When people say a specimen, they think all the specimen is the same. However, each creature has its own code, they have a lot in common, in the meanwhile, they are different and unique. We should deal with or treat different people or things differently.

I totally agree with Percy's opinion. There are some basic and tradition value in society, we have been raised based on the generally accepted value. Thus in the process of growing, we are more likely to just follow the "rules", and less likely to think what kind of person we want to be, what we want to do and what life we want. Every individual is like a specimen, they are unique and special, but if you think what works for one person will also works for another, then you didn't see the differences between two "specimens".

For example, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are two successful businessmen. Except they both made efforts to their business, Bill Gates was born in a wealthy family, and in the beginning of his career, his family gave him a lot of supports both on financial and social networking. However, Steve Jobs came from a poor family, no one was able to help him in anyway, he built up from nothing. After their efforts on career, they made their companies success and influential. Therefore, you can't say that you are not able to achieve your goal because no one is supportive around you, or people who made their dream come true because they come from nothing, which inspired them a lot. All roads lead to Rome, people just take different ways.

It also applies to people who wants to be a chef after they graduate from business school, people who feels like to love the same gender person, people who gives up a high paid job for a non paid job... Everyone is different, and everything happens for a reason. We have to learn the difference and find our own identity.