12 ms·

I used to be a voracious consumer of fiction, but somehow critical reading of Lord of the Flies knocked that out of me in sophomore high school English. I think

I used to be a voracious consumer of fiction, but somehow critical reading of Lord of the Flies knocked that out of me in sophomore high school English. I think it was all the deeper meaning analysis I was forced to do moreso than the book. It just seemed like we were going far beyond the author's intention in a joyless analysis exercise.

bombcar 5y ago
This is the fate of much good literature - forcing recalcitrant high schoolers to dissect something that doesn’t talk to them which can result in a life-long hatred.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  I wonder if it would make it better if teachers would explain to you that this bit is not very useful in and of itself, but we do it to practice writing and because other people think we should. It might dissuade some people from pursuing English literature degrees in college, but that's probably not a bad thing. Would the honesty help at all? I didn't hate literature class in highschool but I think I might have liked it better if I wasn't so confused about why the various arguments and analysis seemed so tenuous to me. Fundamentally, the analysis of literature is the least productive skill we teach kids in high school, although writing is still very important.
- yboris 5y ago
  I was turned off from fiction in high school because I thought "we are being told to read the best of what the world had to offer, and most of this is shit". Turns out there are great fiction books out there - took me a while to unlearn the bias.
Syonyk 5y ago
> I think it was all the deeper meaning analysis I was forced to do moreso than the book. It just seemed like we were going far beyond the author's intention in a joyless analysis exercise. That was literally my entire high school honors English program. You must interpret everything, to the satisfaction of the English teacher, or else. It quite reliably took people who absolutely loved reading and made them hate books. I'm not quite sure the point of it, really. It took me a decade after high school to read a fiction book again, and this is far from uncommon among those who suffered through it alongside me. I don't remember a thing about Red Badge of Courage except I had to extract meaning from why the grass in this particular scene was green - to symbolize new life, hope, rebirth, etc.
- lumost 5y ago
  I recently learned that 19th century literature was often released one chapter at a time. This lead to substantial "filler" chapters which were required for the author to keep the story going. I sometimes wonder if at least some portion of literary analysis is equivalent to teaching contemporary fan theories while waiting for the next episode/sequel/release.
  - edejong 5y ago
    A bit like modern television series, isn’t it?
    - db48x 5y ago
      Yes, a lot of modern television shows have been serial works rather than episodic ones. Babylon 5 comes to mind as one of the earliest serialized television shows, if not the earliest. Well, I suppose soap operas existed before that, but as far as I can tell they rarely had proper narrative endings; they were designed to last as many years as possible.
      - eric-hu 5y ago
        I was wondering why you wrote Babylon 5 when I can think of earlier long running shows, I.e. the original Star Trek, but I guess those are more like soap operas? Hm.
        db48x 5y ago
        It’s not about how long a show was on the air, it has more to do with how interconnected the episodes are and whether the work has a story arc that was planned in advance. In a purely episodic work, you can experience the episodes in any order and have the same enjoyment. In a purely serial work, the order of the episodes (or should we call them installments?) matters a lot. Star Trek was episodic. No matter what happens in one episode, most things remained status quo for the next. There were some slow changes to the cast, but for the most part you could watch the episodes in any order. TNG was book–ended by their dealings with Q, but that story had no closure and only took up about four or five episodes out of 7 years. There were some other stories like that as well, stories that were longer than an episode but much shorter than the show as a whole. On the other hand, Deep Space Nine was closer to a single story with a beginning, middle, and end. There were still plenty of episodes that would still make sense if you moved them to a different season, but it was much less episodic than the previous shows. Voyager was billed as a serial work, but was so badly written that most episodes could be moved around at will with no harm to the storyline. Babylon 5, in contrast, gave every episode some link to the overarching plot, even if it was just hints. (Especially in the first season, when the main antagonists were still hidden and all we had were hints.) It’s easy for episodic shows to be written at the same pace that they are filmed. With serial shows, you have to know in advance where the story is going to go even if you still write most of the dialog at the pace of filming. I didn’t watch much of Lost, but I got the impression that while it was a serial, the writers had no real plan from the start and that everything was made up as they went along. The result is that the story is incoherent. I’ve never watched any soap operas either, but I gather that they try to arrange for frequent cliffhangers and dramatic changes (making the story more serial), but that there is never a planned end to the story; they’re perpetually in the middle. The result is a work with constant churn and no resolution.
geocrasher 5y ago
Me: High School Sophomore in the early 90's Class: English Book: The Lilies of the Field Assignment: Write about what the main character (Homer) does after leaving the nuns he'd helped. What I did: Wrote a hysterical (to me, at the time) story about how he went to South America in search of a mystical coffee with some made up Latin name which, when translated, meant "Grave-digging coffee that really stinks". I'm still proud of that line. His team of scientists (who all looked like "Billy" from The Far Side) were all killed in various ways while traversing the Amazon, all of them funny (to me, at the time). I was very, very happy with myself. Creative writing was fun. Teacher: Rewrite it, be serious. Me: Wrote some drivel that I hated, turned it in, got a lousy grade. That stifled me for a long time, because it's been hard ever since to just let loose on a story. I criticize it every step of the way now. I find short form poetry (often as music lyrics) to be far simpler and just as expressive if not more so.
mathattack 5y ago
I already had the skepticism in high school to think “How do you know what they wanted?” English got worse for me in undergrad so I never reached the real experts.
souprock 5y ago
We now have proof that it really is "going far beyond the author's intention". Texas licensed a poem for a standardized test. The poem's author was still alive, and was unable to "correctly" answer test questions about the meaning of the poem. So yes, the English teachers really are spouting nonsense, and we have proof.
- antran22 5y ago
  There also is a similar story of such in my country. There was this guy who wrote a short and it was included in the national textbook. The guy's son (or grandson, I can't recount exactly) was assigned to analyse that short and the author, out of curiosity, made the kid submitted his analysis instead. The teacher even went as far as commenting "You don't understand the author's intention at all". Which really make us think how absurd literary education can really go.
- goatlover 5y ago
  Depends on whether you subscribe to the "death of the author" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGn9x4-Y_7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGn9x4-Y_7A) or not. Does the author's intent in writing something trump everyone else's interpretation? What if we don't have the original author around to ask? A good example of this is all the interpretations of various passages in the Bible different groups have had throughout history. Instead of privileging the author's intent, one can treat literature, or even religious text as akin to art. The reader participates in the meaning of the piece. Or you can think about how people argue over and critique movies and television shows.
  - souprock 5y ago
    You can find your own meaning, but you should be honest about the fact that it is your own meaning. English teachers are demanding "correct" interpretation that has nothing to do with what the author intended. It's bullshit, and they need to admit that. It's also squeezing very important topics out of the schedule, such as the teaching of proper grammar and other things needed for non-literary writing in a professional career.
bllguo 5y ago
well this is the key thing really. why are we so hung up on authorial intent? For example, Bradbury claimed that fahrenheit 451 is not about censorship - should we let that influence how we interpret and utilize his work? I think it is valuable to use fahrenheit 451 as a precautionary tale about censorship, regardless of what Bradbury originally intended.
raviisoccupied 5y ago
I did a degree in English Literature. It didn't make me hate reading, it just really, really complicated my relationship with the activity.

bombcar 5y ago

This is the fate of much good literature - forcing recalcitrant high schoolers to dissect something that doesn’t talk to them which can result in a life-long hatred.

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
I wonder if it would make it better if teachers would explain to you that this bit is not very useful in and of itself, but we do it to practice writing and because other people think we should. It might dissuade some people from pursuing English literature degrees in college, but that's probably not a bad thing. Would the honesty help at all? I didn't hate literature class in highschool but I think I might have liked it better if I wasn't so confused about why the various arguments and analysis seemed so tenuous to me. Fundamentally, the analysis of literature is the least productive skill we teach kids in high school, although writing is still very important.
yboris 5y ago
I was turned off from fiction in high school because I thought "we are being told to read the best of what the world had to offer, and most of this is shit". Turns out there are great fiction books out there - took me a while to unlearn the bias.

Syonyk 5y ago

> I think it was all the deeper meaning analysis I was forced to do moreso than the book. It just seemed like we were going far beyond the author's intention in a joyless analysis exercise. That was literally my entire high school honors English program. You must interpret everything, to the satisfaction of the English teacher, or else. It quite reliably took people who absolutely loved reading and made them hate books. I'm not quite sure the point of it, really. It took me a decade after high school to read a fiction book again, and this is far from uncommon among those who suffered through it alongside me. I don't remember a thing about Red Badge of Courage except I had to extract meaning from why the grass in this particular scene was green - to symbolize new life, hope, rebirth, etc.

lumost 5y ago
I recently learned that 19th century literature was often released one chapter at a time. This lead to substantial "filler" chapters which were required for the author to keep the story going. I sometimes wonder if at least some portion of literary analysis is equivalent to teaching contemporary fan theories while waiting for the next episode/sequel/release.
- edejong 5y ago
  A bit like modern television series, isn’t it?
  - db48x 5y ago
    Yes, a lot of modern television shows have been serial works rather than episodic ones. Babylon 5 comes to mind as one of the earliest serialized television shows, if not the earliest. Well, I suppose soap operas existed before that, but as far as I can tell they rarely had proper narrative endings; they were designed to last as many years as possible.
    - eric-hu 5y ago
      I was wondering why you wrote Babylon 5 when I can think of earlier long running shows, I.e. the original Star Trek, but I guess those are more like soap operas? Hm.
      - db48x 5y ago
        It’s not about how long a show was on the air, it has more to do with how interconnected the episodes are and whether the work has a story arc that was planned in advance. In a purely episodic work, you can experience the episodes in any order and have the same enjoyment. In a purely serial work, the order of the episodes (or should we call them installments?) matters a lot. Star Trek was episodic. No matter what happens in one episode, most things remained status quo for the next. There were some slow changes to the cast, but for the most part you could watch the episodes in any order. TNG was book–ended by their dealings with Q, but that story had no closure and only took up about four or five episodes out of 7 years. There were some other stories like that as well, stories that were longer than an episode but much shorter than the show as a whole. On the other hand, Deep Space Nine was closer to a single story with a beginning, middle, and end. There were still plenty of episodes that would still make sense if you moved them to a different season, but it was much less episodic than the previous shows. Voyager was billed as a serial work, but was so badly written that most episodes could be moved around at will with no harm to the storyline. Babylon 5, in contrast, gave every episode some link to the overarching plot, even if it was just hints. (Especially in the first season, when the main antagonists were still hidden and all we had were hints.) It’s easy for episodic shows to be written at the same pace that they are filmed. With serial shows, you have to know in advance where the story is going to go even if you still write most of the dialog at the pace of filming. I didn’t watch much of Lost, but I got the impression that while it was a serial, the writers had no real plan from the start and that everything was made up as they went along. The result is that the story is incoherent. I’ve never watched any soap operas either, but I gather that they try to arrange for frequent cliffhangers and dramatic changes (making the story more serial), but that there is never a planned end to the story; they’re perpetually in the middle. The result is a work with constant churn and no resolution.

geocrasher 5y ago

Me: High School Sophomore in the early 90's Class: English Book: The Lilies of the Field Assignment: Write about what the main character (Homer) does after leaving the nuns he'd helped. What I did: Wrote a hysterical (to me, at the time) story about how he went to South America in search of a mystical coffee with some made up Latin name which, when translated, meant "Grave-digging coffee that really stinks". I'm still proud of that line. His team of scientists (who all looked like "Billy" from The Far Side) were all killed in various ways while traversing the Amazon, all of them funny (to me, at the time). I was very, very happy with myself. Creative writing was fun. Teacher: Rewrite it, be serious. Me: Wrote some drivel that I hated, turned it in, got a lousy grade. That stifled me for a long time, because it's been hard ever since to just let loose on a story. I criticize it every step of the way now. I find short form poetry (often as music lyrics) to be far simpler and just as expressive if not more so.

mathattack 5y ago

I already had the skepticism in high school to think “How do you know what they wanted?” English got worse for me in undergrad so I never reached the real experts.

souprock 5y ago

We now have proof that it really is "going far beyond the author's intention". Texas licensed a poem for a standardized test. The poem's author was still alive, and was unable to "correctly" answer test questions about the meaning of the poem. So yes, the English teachers really are spouting nonsense, and we have proof.

antran22 5y ago
There also is a similar story of such in my country. There was this guy who wrote a short and it was included in the national textbook. The guy's son (or grandson, I can't recount exactly) was assigned to analyse that short and the author, out of curiosity, made the kid submitted his analysis instead. The teacher even went as far as commenting "You don't understand the author's intention at all". Which really make us think how absurd literary education can really go.
goatlover 5y ago
Depends on whether you subscribe to the "death of the author" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGn9x4-Y_7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGn9x4-Y_7A) or not. Does the author's intent in writing something trump everyone else's interpretation? What if we don't have the original author around to ask? A good example of this is all the interpretations of various passages in the Bible different groups have had throughout history. Instead of privileging the author's intent, one can treat literature, or even religious text as akin to art. The reader participates in the meaning of the piece. Or you can think about how people argue over and critique movies and television shows.
- souprock 5y ago
  You can find your own meaning, but you should be honest about the fact that it is your own meaning. English teachers are demanding "correct" interpretation that has nothing to do with what the author intended. It's bullshit, and they need to admit that. It's also squeezing very important topics out of the schedule, such as the teaching of proper grammar and other things needed for non-literary writing in a professional career.

bllguo 5y ago

well this is the key thing really. why are we so hung up on authorial intent? For example, Bradbury claimed that fahrenheit 451 is not about censorship - should we let that influence how we interpret and utilize his work? I think it is valuable to use fahrenheit 451 as a precautionary tale about censorship, regardless of what Bradbury originally intended.

raviisoccupied 5y ago

I did a degree in English Literature. It didn't make me hate reading, it just really, really complicated my relationship with the activity.