wildehacked:

heelgripper:

tibby:

people on this website will complain about how their high school english teachers forced them to learn about how blue curtains represent depression and how that was stupid because they’re so smart and they already know how to interpret all media perfectly. and then will act as if the cult from midsommar is some kind of feminist girlpower movement.

Hey, people can be dumb AND have terrible high school English teachers. And blue curtains representing depression IS stupid, and shallow, and I will hate that kind of analysis until I die. There are unfathomable depths of bad teaching out there. Teach kids how to analyze the important stuff in stories, and ask questions like: “What’s this cult trying to do? What do we think of their methods? What are the moral implications of their actions? How does the story frame the main character’s emotional arc?” 

Blue fucking curtains are all most of us get. 

While you’re definitely right that people can be dumb and have terrible English teachers, I actually don’t think close reading is dumb? I think close reading is one of the wild joys of….being a reader? 

Blue curtains always representing depression is silly. But in the right story it might be true. More than that, in the right essay it might be amazing? 

Like, I absolutely agree that learning about rhetoric, which is more what you’re talking about, is critical. But close reading can be this joyful exploration of a story! 

I remember when I was in high school I wrote an essay about Narcissus and Goldmund that basically argued “they’re gay! they’re in love! please respect my position, Mr. English Teacher,” and I spent most of the essay close-reading the scene where Narcissus rescues Goldmund from his prison cell, and the significance of Narcissus bringing in a candle that was almost burnt out, but still illuminating the dark cell, and how the descriptive words Hesse used for the darkness and the light of the candle were like other words he’d used earlier to describe bags of money, and then I connected this to an argument about how Narcissus not only illuminates truth and self-identity to Goldmund, he also metaphorically replenishes him (or something. this is an essay i wrote as a teenager :P) 

why I remember this essay, above all the other essays I wrote in high school, is because I remember feeling absolutely GIDDY for having made those connections, for being able to craft an argument through symbolism, for feeling like the point I felt a little daring to be making could be backed up with evidence even though I thought I was probably going against the grain of Hesse’s intentions in the scene. it didn’t feel like something I was making up, it felt like something I’d discovered. it felt right. 

and my english teacher circled the paragraph where I’d connected the candle to the money and wrote “this kind of close reading is what literary analysis is all about” in the margin. he used purple pen. i remember what his handwriting looked like in that margin. because it was like I’d cracked this secret code, and my english teacher understood me, we were speaking the secret language together! 

without context, “the candle represents love and the money represents self-worth” sounds a lot like “the blue curtains represent depression.” 

with context, “the candle represents love” is basically why I became an English major.