Englishy Things

I’m still deciding on whether or not to take an English Lit course sometime. I’ve always vaguely despised the way that students are forced to wring meaning out of books and short stories. All the overanalyzing and discussing and presuming gives me a headache. If a person reads a book and appreciates it as a work of art, why must they peer into every nook and cranny for foreshadowing, plot peaks, characterization, and themes, to name a few. For goodness’ sake, a book can have multiple climaxes, motifs, and points of view. It largely depends on the reader and what experiences have shaped their views up until the point of reading the book. You experience a book in a different way from the next person. There’s rarely a “right” answer to anything.

   I’m not saying it isn’t good to notice these things. It’s great to be aware of them. But notice them and MOVE ON. Don’t spend pages and pages writing about it.

If we have to look that desperately for meaning in a book, if we have to invent opinions about pre-selected aspects of a piece of writing just to pass exams, (notice how just is in italics, because, contrary to popular belief, your worth as a human being is not actually determined by whether or not you can pass a standardized test), then either the whole business is being taught wrong, the writer wasn’t as clear as she/he should have been in the first place, OR we were meant to read books as readers and not as analysts.