« "Blinded" | Main | Chapter 3 Question 2 »
October 05, 2005
"Seeing"
“Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization.” This quotation from Annie Dillard’s essay “Seeing” certainly gives a whole new perspective on the concept of seeing. Really seeing the world takes a reasonable amount of effort and thinking. Annie Dillard is saying that in order to truly see the world, one must actually bring it to one’s attention by verbalizing it, either aloud or in one’s mind. By doing so, one makes actual observations and is forced to take in the visual stimulus instead of just casually taking note of it. One common example is looking at a painting; one must really look at it, observe it and think about it in order to truly see it for what it is.
I agree with Annie Dillard in that in order to truly see things, one must consciously bring it to one’s attention through some form of verbalization. I know that in my personal experiences, I tend to just take things in instead of actually seeing them in this way, just because there is always so much to see. One can’t possibly take the time to stop and look and consciously think about everything that one sees, there’s just not enough time in the day to do that.
Seeing things for what they truly are and taking the time to observe them instead of just casually noticing them is exactly what we’ve been doing in class with the paintings. We look at the paintings and pictures and then we analyze what’s really in the picture and consciously think about it on the semantic level.
-Jessica F.
Posted by lcisfaria at October 5, 2005 10:51 PM