Possum Whallop or What English Class is For?

What English class is for?

In my freshman year of high school we were reading Romeo and Juliet and I distinctly remember the indignation I felt in having to read it. Instead of seeing metaphors and poetry, I saw nonsense. Jumbles of pretty words heaped in a pile that some faceless and nefarious organization had deemed important. It was all a lie that everyone was buying into because...they were fools.

And so, with all the confidence of someone who knows absolutely nothing about what they're doing, I would use my free writing time to create pages and pages of nonsense words and phrases. And all it would take--the only thing separating me from Shakespeare--was a couple hundred years and the stupidity of future generations to deem me brilliant. 

I was thinking today about how at the time it seemed so clear that I was pointing out the foolishness of Shakespeare. But, it was really a reflection of my stupidity. Arrogant little peon.

It wasn't until college that I realized that

1) if you want to derive any personal meaning or fulfillment from literature, or any kind of art, you have to assume, or trust, that its components are meaningfully arranged. That knowing about the structure--the architecture--can unlock it. That questioning a work will not just turn up a random series of accidents.

Because there's no point in writing a paper about a poem or a story if you view yourself as a spectator. Someone who is just watching and registering the surface appearance has nothing important to say. 

You've got to get in there! In the leaky and creaky inner-workings and look around because that's where your thoughts and experience and knowledge that you bring becomes important. Now you're looking for something. 

2) What you're saying about the work is as much a reflection on you as it is on the work. I thought Shakespeare was stupid because I couldn't get anything out of it--because I was stupid! 

The reader matters. And there's sort of a contradiction that people who dislike English classes (including myself) run into. People complain that papers written for English can't be accurately graded because it's all very subjective. But, I think those same people (me too!) treat their reaction to a work as if its built into the story. As if, they have no control over how they think about something. Which isn't really subjective at all. It's pushing the blame on the teacher and the work itself whenever its most convenient. There's a squeamishness involved in owning your interpretation. 

But if you recognize the importance of your interpretative abilities and craft your argument accordingly, then this is what should make your paper successful. Not that you had some lucky insight into the work or into the mind of the person grading it. 

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So then, as best I can see it, this leads to two big problems.

If a work is meaningfully arranged by the person who wrote it. Then what does it matter what the reader thinks about it? Shouldn't the author be the be-all end-all? They put the meanings in there. If we're so sure they knew what they were doing then why would we have any reason to deviate from what they must have intended?

(First of all, this is a pretty lame way to argue with yourself, Andy). Well, I would dare to guess that anyone who writes because they enjoy writing and reading, wouldn't just be trying to convince you of some immediate, recognizable truth. That's propaganda. A writer would develop the work to make the discovery of its boundaries and its rules and its work-INGS, fulfilling. 

Or, that the work isn't trying to provide answers so much as an interesting, engaging way of posing a problem. And an interesting way of discovering the problem. So, then the really important part has been left up to the reader by design. Ha! Try to escape responsibility now!

BUT! If my interpretation is an expression of myself. How can you put a grade on it? That's not fair.

To which I respond: it's like TENNIS but you don't know any of the rules!

Part of close reading and understanding literature is figuring out the rules and boundaries of each work. Obviously, not every interpretation can work. In the same way that you can't just whack a ball at someone and call it tennis. All of the facts and quotations and background knowledge you pull together for an argument is like assembling the limits of the game/work. And the tighter you set the limits, the less ambiguity, the stronger your argument becomes.

But the whole point of playing tennis is seeing how people use those limits differently. You want to align the limits you choose to set as closely as you can to the ones "set" in the poem/story (to weed out what is wrong and cannot be true and highlight what does work). Then, you play. 

And it's certainly true that someone can play tennis better than you. Or that you can violate your own rules. 

So, a paper isn't just your pure personal expression. It's your expression within the confines of something (when would hope) is really awesome. Like the difference between playing on a nasty asphalt court and a huge stadium. And your ability to recognize those limits and work within them are representative of both your analytic and creative mind.

And I think all of that has moral implications too. How you go about living your life and such. But that's for another spewing post.