Mess John Hollander

The story “Mess” by John Hollander is interesting take on the concept on cleanliness and how the human mind perceives it. Hollander starts out his essay by giving an example of how different people react to a mess. He refers to the subjects as X and Y. He states that what may seem messy to X, could be perfectly neat and orderly to Y. Hollander even goes as far to say that if Y had a pile a books, and X arranged all the books into a neat stack, the neat stack could appear to be utter chaos to Y. After this profound example, the article continues to go on and list all the different kind of messes that exist in our lives. Hollander breaks the messes into different categories such as outdoor messes, indoor messes, personal states, and personal appearance messes. …show more content…
Hollander describes a scenario in which he is searching for his computer mouse on a desk at his place of work. This desk is absolutely covered in notes and letters, so finding the mouse proved to be difficult. He realized as he sifted through the paper stacks, he was creating a mess. The paragraphs that follow this personal reflection just simply state historical connection with the word “mess”. The final paragraph revisits his personal mess story. He goes on to describe how his cat, although a very neat creature at heart, could simply walk all over the mess at his desk unfazed. He throws in this last part about his cat to give a personal example similar to that of X and