Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[prabe]

Sorry, what isn't how literature is mostly taught? Are you suggesting that MOST literature classes are teaching students to make unsupported assertions?

I'm saying that most literature classes--especially below college level, but also including 100 and maybe some 200 level stuff--feature instructors making unsupported assertions (or at least failing to adequate support their assertions) about literary works and testing their students on those assertions (learn them or fail!). Making your own assertions is a quick and easy way to receive failing grades, or at least it was; learning to come to your own conclusions about a given piece--its meaning/s, its intention/s--was never really on-offer.

Obviously our experiences can be different--probably are! I wish I'd had instructors like you, instead of what I mostly had.

(EDIT: Also, you seem to be replying to someone I cannot see, who IIRC has much stronger opinions on "literature" than I do. I'm saying literature is, or at least has been, mostly taught poorly. I'm not saying analysis is always and forever useless or bad, just that it's at least sometimes wrong.)

 

[overgeeked]

It's weird that you wrote this reply to me asserting that I'm assuming things, while quoting me explicitly saying that it's a speculation and at best MIGHT be true, until and unless the theory can be supported with greater evidence. I ain't assuming naughty word.

So you don't assume the writer means anything important by having the curtains in scene 103 be blue? Cool. So then there's no disagreement between us.

Or, and pardon me if this is a really weird, bizarre possibility to raise, I have been and my teacher was better than that.

Cool. Then I'd say you were incredibly lucky to get a teacher like that. They're rare as hen's teeth.

 

[Ryujin]

Who were the people, in this case? Enthusiastic but ignorant undergrads?

Nope. High school teachers, then college instructors. In both if you didn't accept their particular grade of "truth", you didn't get the marks. I was one of the very few (sometimes only) student who would speak up in the film classes. The day that were watching "La Strada." When it wrapped the instructor looked around the room and then asked, "What did you think?" then, for some reason, he looked right at me. I responded, "I though it was pretentious <word meaning excrement>." That was an interesting discussion.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Really, if you really read the source material, the Torment Nexus is meant to be a symbol of progress and prosperity!

 

[Deset Gled]

Really, if you really read the source material, the Torment Nexus is meant to be a symbol of progress and prosperity!

You're not asking the really important questions:

Is the Torment Nexus blue?

 

[payn]

Days like this I really wish we had an eyeroll reaction. Its absolutely all that is needed sometimes.

 

[Deset Gled]

Days like this I really wish we had an eyeroll reaction. Its absolutely all that is needed sometimes.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You're not asking the really important questions:

Is the Torment Nexus blue?

Mine is (I just ordered the basic one).

The gold plated one was 50% more expensive, and who needs that kind of gilty pleasure?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Re: symbolic analysis:

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes the gun isn’t Chekov’s.

 

[overgeeked]

Nope. High school teachers, then college instructors. In both if you didn't accept their particular grade of "truth", you didn't get the marks. I was one of the very few (sometimes only) student who would speak up in the film classes. The day that were watching "La Strada." When it wrapped the instructor looked around the room and then asked, "What did you think?" then, for some reason, he looked right at me. I responded, "I though it was pretentious <word meaning excrement>." That was an interesting discussion.

That mirrors my experience through high school, college, and grad school. Analysis like this comes in two kinds. Either you're free to argue any damned thing you want and get an A for effort or you agree with the teacher or fail. Teachers seem to love this stuff though as it eats up class time and means they don't have to bother reading papers filled with it.