By saying that “It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world.”, Knox is trying to tell the reader that as we gradually mature from infants, to teenagers to adults, we become so accustomed to what we know as our everyday environment, that we lose the will to wonder about the world. Hence, our faculty to wonder diminishes.I couldn’t disagree with him more.
A child, undoubtedly, wonders about the world and its surroundings more than an adult. However, this is only because everything is new to him and he has yet to experience it all. Although children do wonder much more than adults, they do not think about philosophical questions such as ‘Where does the world come from?’ and ‘Who am I?’. There is a certain type of innocence in children which allows them to be carefree and it is obvious they have not reached the stage which would compel them to wonder about something so profound.
Over time as a child grows up; he starts to ‘crawl deep into the rabbit’s fur’ and eventually ‘snuggles down comfortably, and stays there for the rest of their lives’. As people age, they get so used to their surroundings to a point where they no longer need to wonder about simple things such as ‘dogs being biologically different to humans’.
Due to the hectic lifestyles adults have to endure for example working and providing for the family, their ability to wonder about the world does not decrease at all. However the will to wonder nearly takes a backseat in their lives. Sometimes, adults are bombarded with moments and experiences in life, which leads them to wonder more about their lives and question themselves. For instance, Sophie was busy with her daily life and she was completely oblivious to the unanswerable questions in the world, but this was only till she started receiving letters from Knox who triggered her thoughts.
In conclusion, I do not agree with Knox. I believe as I grew up I have a better understanding of the world and it leads me to wonder beyond the materialistic world, which made me realize that there is more to life than the materialistic world we see in front of us everyday.
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1 comment:
Neelam
Ah, but does a child see the materialistic world at all? Or do they see everything as a wonderful game and an opportunity to imagine? The very fact you say you can see beyond the materialistic world acknowledges that the materialistic world is a barrier. Isn’t this ‘materialistic world’ with all its demands just another way of saying ‘rabbit’s fur’? Did we create this materialistic world and all its demands simply to bury people in the rabbit’s fur so they would stop really living and wondering and become zombies? By serving the material world ‘to provide for our families’ aren’t we just as guilty in sustaining this obsessive and materialistic culture? Erich Fromm declared that in the twentieth century ‘man was dead’ because of their enslavement to materialism. What do you think of that? Can you truly wonder, in the fresh and innocent way of the child which is I think the way Know means, if you are already aware that you must somehow defy the materialistic world to do so?
M Turver
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