Can language capture the enormity of experience?

It's a complicated question, but the answer is simply "yes". My first instinct and I think the first instinct of many would be "no", because it seems impossible to use words to recreate an experience. In fact, I think in our own lives we've failed probably 90% of the time in doing so. (Think about all those times you've had to say "guess you had to be there....")

But there are circumstances where language can effectively recreate an experience, or at least an aspect of experience. Without specifics, spoken language is the easiest way to do so. I think we all remember a time when somebody told a story that was so gripping and so intense that we actually felt like we were there. The images of the story flow through our brains like it's something we actually saw. That's a case of language recreating experience and capturing the enormity of the situation.

Every time I think of language successfully capturing true experience, I think of Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Most probably don't remember the scene, but there's a very emotional part where he talks to his friend when he gets back from the island. He's describing being there, alone, on that deserted rock constantly thinking about Helen Hunt. He said the thought of her "kept me alive".



Maybe it's the clever camera work, the emotionally filled language, or the dramatic presence of Tom Hanks....but whatever it is, that scene made me feel like it was me on that island, that it was me missing my girl, and that it was me alone, depressed, with very little hope to get back to the real world. In this regard, the language the writers of the film use causes the viewer to run through the events in their head, thinking as Tom Hanks would think, and this too is capturing experience in language.

So in short, yes....language can capture the enormity of experience. It's a delicate, difficult process that requires special circumstances or masters of language to pull off.