Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Dannyalcatraz]

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.

Depends on the teacher and what they’re trying to teach. If they’re genuinely trying to teach symbolic analysis, they will be reading those papers.

 

[Ryujin]

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.

At least I got to rewatch "The Prisoner" in that class. it was a good example of being stuck in an interpretation, with the final episode.

Instructor: He was insane all the time and it was all in his head.
Me: It was the psychedelic '60s. Number 6 seeing his own face means that Number 6 was really Number 1.

(I think that mine is also, rather surprisingly, the common interpretation.)

 

[el-remmen]

I long ago learned (and this site helped) that it is often as pointless to discuss literary analysis with people who don’t (or don’t want to) understand it, as it is to discuss electrical systems with someone who just wants to flip the switch and have something turn on. There is a lot more going on, but if they don’t care, who am I to try to make them?

Signed,

Osvaldo Oyola, PhD.

 

[trappedslider]

And let's be honest, we're geeks and we love to take things apart to examine them to death and beyond no matter what the author intended or didn't intend.

 

[overgeeked]

At least I got to rewatch "The Prisoner" in that class. it was a good example of being stuck in an interpretation, with the final episode.

Instructor: He was insane all the time and it was all in his head.
Me: It was the psychedelic '60s. Number 6 seeing his own face means that Number 6 was really Number 1.

(I think that mine is also, rather surprisingly, the common interpretation.)

Yeah. Analysis like this is a literary Rorschach test. There's nothing solid there to grab onto but you're supposed to "see" something in the details. It's you projecting onto the text. Which is fine. But when people want to make it into something more than that, or worse, something "important," I just roll my eyes. Save me from the pretentiousness of academe.

 

[trappedslider]

Yeah. Analysis like this is a literary Rorschach test. There's nothing solid there to grab onto but you're supposed to "see" something in the details. It's you projecting onto the text. Which is fine. But when people want to make it into something more than that, or worse, something "important," I just roll my eyes. Save me from the pretentiousness of academe.

and then sell a book on what they see....i'm sure you're aware of the who knows how many books all interpreting star wars differently, or books that interpreting other books in various forms.

If i weren't lazy and willing to put in the actual work, i could put out a book tying The Hobbit to <insert random religion/view point here>

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In high school when doing creative writing, i took and used the names of my classmates because i was lazy,and i didn't feel one way or another towards them. But if you read that it means i like the person that would be on you and not me.

"The author liked the people whose names they used" doesn't really hold water, given what we know about who authors include in the story.

But looking at the names you used, I would be able to accurately make some assumptions about who was in your high school, what era you wrote the story in, etc.

Even if you don't mean to, you are including additional meaning in your writing with the choices you make.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yes, and sometimes the curtains are blue because the curtains the writer is looking at--or possibly remembering--are blue. Not every single thing an author includes--or doesn't!--has deeper more-symbolic-than-words meaning.

The amount of stuff that doesn't tell us about the author is extremely small. The fact that authors might be unaware of it, or actively in denial about it -- "all of these protagonists having screwed up relationships with their fathers is just a trope, I swear" -- doesn't change that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That's the trouble with college-level critique, it assumes all those mostly irrelevant details are important.

College criticism courses ask whether the details are important. Contrary to the memes, they don't insist they are.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Or they do have liberal arts degrees but recognize this kind of analysis is pure nonsense. It's mostly guess work and projection on the part of the reader and a means to fill time in class and fill space in a paper.

If they're paying to go to college and the professor is insisting that every choice has an inherent meaning, rather than asking whether it does, they should get their money back.

But I would be flabbergasted if that was the case, 99% of the time.