This course has truly been one of fluidity: in readers, in texts, in identity – in interpretation, in intention, in conceptualizations of self and others… All of this is encapsulated in the broad concept of perception. Perception is, perhaps, the thread which binds all our work this semester into a cohesive narrative. Perhaps it is even perception which creates the narrative form that defines all of our experiences (as posited by Barbara Hardy).
Perception has been significant in just about all of the things we read/watched throughout this semester. Lewis Carroll uses perception as a plot device of sorts in the Alice books: a consistent tool to express the inconsistency of Wonderland (or the Looking-Glass realm). Nothing is as it seems in either world, and the seemingly false perceptions – or perhaps just ever-changing perceptions – are a key characteristic of these realms in which Alice explores. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland we have the infant in chapter 6 who, within the course of a few paragraphs, has become a pig. In chapter 5 of Through the Looking-Glass we have the White Queen quite suddenly becoming a sheep, and even the setting which Alice had taken herself to be in shifted from the side of a brook to a little shop. These are only single examples from each book which shows how Carroll challenges perceptions with a logic that just isn’t what we expect it to be. He toys with it; deconstructs and reconstructs it.
In contrast, in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, in particular, we see what an impact perception can make through a single shift. In fact, it is the pivotal point of both stories: a change in perception for the main character. In the case of Scrooge, his apathetic and miserly view of the world was shifted through the intervention of the spirits which visit him, and this spares him from a lonely death and the curse to bear his sins beyond the grave. On the other hand, George Bailey is spared from casting his own life away as a result of his perception of his lack of value, his life literally saved by the work of his guardian angel, Clarence. Both Clarence and the spirits which visit Scrooge take on the task of changing the perceptions of the protagonists, and their success leads to a happy ending. These works both express the power of perception for better or for worse; the implication that one can change the future through the capacity to change themselves. It’s a potent message to derive from them, that’s sure.
Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf both tackle similar concepts of how perceptions influence our reality. In The Importance of Being Earnest, for example, love itself becomes hinged on perception. In order for Jack and Algernon to be considered worthy of the love of Gwendolyn and Cecily, respectively, they needed to have the name Ernest. It was these women’s perceptions which engendered this requirement, and to make the power of perception more evident, they had fallen for their respective men because they perceived that that man was Ernest. For a certain period of the play, both Jack and Algernon are Ernest in the eyes of Gwendolyn and Cecily, and this perception was enough truth for them to agree to marriage. Perception becomes the middle path where lies and truths become one and the same. Take Gwendolyn thinking that Jack’s name is Ernest: she believes it to be true, and so it is for her. Jack believes it to be a lie, so to him, it is false. But who was correct, then, when they find that Jack’s real name was Ernest all along? This use of the perception of these characters is what creates the dynamic of the play. Wilde shows us that an “actual” truth can change our perceptions, but so too can perception influence somebody’s truth.
Woolf, on the other hand, takes on the concept of perception in a broader sense, using the perceptions of her characters to produce the stream of consciousnesses that make up the novel Mrs. Dalloway. Throughout the story, there is a recurring flow from one perception to the next, to the next. There are switches in perception within oneself, as when Clarissa Dalloway perceives the shot of a pistol outside before acknowledging it is the sound of a motor car; contrasting juxtapositions between different characters’ perceptions (often of the same thing), as when the street goers look up and interpret the meaning of the trails left by the plane overhead; or even as a comparison in demonstration of how similar two very different people’s perceptions may be. This last example can be found in the balcony scene near the end of the novel (beginning here), as Clarissa contemplates the suicide of Septimus. These two characters never meet in the story, and though they are wholly different people, they still somehow have a connection; a similar perception. Clarissa feels in that moment that she understands Septimus, despite not knowing his name, despite never having met him – she feels she understands how he perceives the world and decides that she is glad for the fact he had taken his own life. Albeit dark, there is a sort of beauty that emerges in this connection.
Thoreau gives a nod to our uniqueness in individuality of thought and of success as they see it. In the conclusion of Walden, he speaks of the importance of thought over material goods: money and the like. He emphasizes self-exploration of the “worlds within you,” and promotes an ideal of following your own path: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” We all can coexist despite our different perceptions and realities, and it’s alright to pursue our own path. No matter how much we seem to contrast, we are more similar than we think without having to conform, and there’s a certain camaraderie to that.
Anthony Appiah reminds us that even if identity does affect our experiences, what we learn from them differs from person to person. What we make our reality to be can either trap us or set us free, as seen with Ebenezer Scrooge and George Bailey; it can bring us together or set us apart, as demonstrated in by Wilde and Woolf; and it can also be used to create worlds beyond our own, as Alice had done in both of Carroll’s Alice books.
The same goes for us, of course – this extends beyond characters and has the potential to remind us of the power of our own perceptions. Even in analyzing these works, I am only giving my own perception of what we can glean from them. Others can agree or disagree, and that doesn’t mean I’m right or wrong because all of us are going to look at something a different way. This course has shown me that I don’t need to fear being wrong in the realm of literary criticism because nobody is wrong. In searching for a meaning in any work, we will invariably take that step into further abstraction as we wonder what the author’s perceptions were on their own work, just the same as we will invariably be influenced by our own experiences and perceptions whenever we derive meaning from anything. It is a fluid interpretation from person to person, and also within ourselves as we develop over time and look at things in new lights and new perspectives.
Hardy was right when she said that we tend to perceive our own experiences in a narrative form, and as Alasdair MacIntyre pointed out, we are all the main characters of our own story; each life is a part of many other narratives, such that we are all a part of each others’ stories. Each of us would tell it differently, but in my perception, I’m happy how this narrative of ours went, however transient. As this semester reaches its conclusion, all of our stories will continue with this new experience in tow. It’s up to us how we choose to carry it.