English Class

[MandyPug]

Does anyone else not see the point of over analyzing literature to the point that it's mush with all it's retarded hidden meanings and over thought themes?

Why can't we just enjoy literature for the entertainment factor and not some sort of hidden agenda and subliminal messages that authors supposedly stick into the storylines?

Can you tell i'm writing a paper on a book i've never read and left it to the last minute? I've got one page out of 6... It's due in 7 hours and i want to kill myself i'm so tired and not interested at all in the book or the paper i'm supposed to be writing on it.

I may go ask Cleverbot what he thinks of The Great Gatsby...

 

[Saeleofu]

Lol, I just finished a paper over The Great Gatsby. It's actually a decent book. I got a 98% and I haven't read the book in 7 years xD What I hate are the tests. Essays I can fake easy. Tests, not so much.

Check out Sparknotes. It's a lifesaver. I haven't read anything for my english class this semester (I'm taking English 232 as a senior because I neglected to take it sooner. Ugh.)

 

[MandyPug]

Lol, I just finished a paper over The Great Gatsby. It's actually a decent book. I got a 98% and I haven't read the book in 7 years xD What I hate are the tests. Essays I can fake easy. Tests, not so much.

Check out Sparknotes. It's a lifesaver. I haven't read anything for my english class this semester (I'm taking English 232 as a senior because I neglected to take it sooner. Ugh.)

Lol i read the first chapter and just could not get into it, and i'm one of those people that has to be pulled in right away or i'm gonna put down the book forever! I actually love the tests and i do very well because there's an answer and i know there is one, essays i hate because i never think my thoughts are good enough (thanks high school) and i hesitate and reword and reword and reword until i've beaten it to death. Plus i can never stretch it out to 6 pages nor can i properly integrate a quotation and my prof is not helpful about it.

And sparknotes, I'm already there. I'm in English 1900 even though I'm a biology student, i don't know why we need to take it but we do and i couldn't care less about it. I've got too much science stuff to deal with all the readings in English.

 

[Saeleofu]

Sounds like our classes are about the same level. I used to LOVE english, I used to love to write, I used ti love to read. Highschool killed reading because I never got to read what I wanted. Creative writing my 2nd year of college killed that for me because nothing I ever wrote was ever good enough for the teacher (even though I had already had 1 short story, a memoir, and a poem published before I took the class and won $50 between them all in a local contest)

 

[BostonBanker]

Got to disagree, I loved English class and everything that went with it. Maybe I just had amazing teachers (well, and a huge love of reading thanks to my mom). There are some books that are strictly written for entertainment, but others have so much depth and meaning, I feel like you miss 75% of the book if you don't dig in a bit.

 

[puppydog]

I am with BB. You gain so much insight and learn so much from studying the hidden subtext. It is about opening your horrizons.

 

[Dekka]

I never really enjoyed english.. but they why is very important.

So many people just read things and take them a face value. The ability to read into things, to critically think about what is being said, and not said is a valuable life skill.

Just reading any news article should use english class honed skills, unless you merely want to absorb what the media wants you too.

 

[Izzy's Valkyrie]

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" I hate looking for hidden meaning in novels. I know if I ever wrote a book, I'd be annoyed by little uppity students telling people that my pillar of doom meant I had daddy issues I prefer to read novels for fun, not some hidden meaning because there doesn't have to be a double meaning in everything literary.

 

[Renee750il]

You will learn more about human nature from great literature than you ever will from any psychology class -- if you're paying attention

A combination of literature and history and you can have -- again, if you're paying attention to the literature, history and what's going on around you -- a great understanding of human nature on a grand scale, not to mention be able to predict the future with some accuracy, since it's human nature to repeat the same idiocies over and over.

 

[Renee750il]

Just reading any news article should use english class honed skills, unless you merely want to absorb what the media wants you too.

:hail:

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" I hate looking for hidden meaning in novels. I know if I ever wrote a book, I'd be annoyed by little uppity students telling people that my pillar of doom meant I had daddy issues I prefer to read novels for fun, not some hidden meaning because there doesn't have to be a double meaning in everything literary.

That's double-edged for me, Izzy. The novella that the entire workshop is hounding me to expand into a book is a piece that should be read at face value. That's how it was written, kind of like Stephen King should be read at face value.

The book I'm in love with that I'm writing, Scent of the Moon, is FULL of many different meanings on many different levels.

 

[MandyPug]

I still hate English. Hate it. Really don't care to be enlightened about human nature, I'm in bloody Pre-Vet. I've taken 12 years of English and aced my English diploma in high school. I shouldn't have to waste one of my few time slots in university taking a class with a stuck up professor that can't form a sentence without saying "Umm". Not to mention the class is at 8am on the lowest underground floor in a room with faulty lighting and the prof speaks in monotone, i rarely am able to stay awake.

 

[Renee750il]

Mandy, hon, if you're going into veterinary practice you're going to need at least as much understanding of human nature as you have of animals

I'm truly sorry you've had rotten Lit teachers. Just take the techniques you've learned about analyzing and use them later, on your own, reading on your own with no pressure.

 

[MandyPug]

Mandy, hon, if you're going into veterinary practice you're going to need at least as much understanding of human nature as you have of animals

I'm truly sorry you've had rotten Lit teachers. Just take the techniques you've learned about analyzing and use them later, on your own, reading on your own with no pressure.

He hasn't taught us anything. Basically he stands up there and picks apart stuff mumbling and saying it means sex. He's creepy because he talks about sex and "phallic symbols" so much! I honestly don't believe every piece of literature we've studied means the author had problems in bed...

I may never read again, this class has made it painful.

 

[GlassOnion]

Why can't we just enjoy literature for the entertainment factor and not some sort of hidden agenda and subliminal messages that authors supposedly stick into the storylines?

Well because most of the time the work does have a hidden agenda and subliminal message. For instance, the Wizard of Oz wasn't about flying monkeys, a lost girl, and an evil witch, but rather the Gold Standard.


And as a vet, you're going to be dealing with people more than animals. Sounds weird, but every critter has an owner attached to it.

 

[Renee750il]

He hasn't taught us anything. Basically he stands up there and picks apart stuff mumbling and saying it means sex. He's creepy because he talks about sex and "phallic symbols" so much! I honestly don't believe every piece of literature we've studied means the author had problems in bed...

I may never read again, this class has made it painful.

Oy. Ugh. Try to regard him as a low comedian and go on from there :wall:

And don't feel bad about Gatsby. I never HAD to read it for Lit, but I figured I should. I couldn't slog through it either.

 

[Romy]

I don't buy into all the subliminal messaging crap people read into novels and art.

I do think that even if the artist (writer or otherwise) believes they have created a surface only piece, there are layers in there that they probably aren't aware of. On the other side of the coin, I don't believe there is anyone out there who can know what something means, even when the meaning is put there intentionally, because we're all going to read our own experiences and ideals into something. Unless they create something like The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, which is intended to hit you over the head with it.

Just look at the Lord of the Rings. People have said that it's about WWI, WWII, that it's a catholic book, that it's pagan, etc. Tolkien wrote it single chapters at a time to mail off to his son who was fighting in WWII, as something for Chris to read in the trenches. Seriously, I doubt he was crafting the story with any of those elements in mind. He ran the world through his internal filter and that's what came out. We run a story through our internal filters, and what we get out of it is probably going to be completely different than what the author put in.

Mandy, your teacher sounds like he has some "issues" . That would creep me out too. The world is not all about dongs! lol.

 

[Renee750il]

Heheh . . . Romy, now that I've read some of The Book of Merlyn in a scholarly form of translation (Nikolai Tolstoi), I've realized that Tolkein didn't write anything new in LTOR -- it's the classic Celt legend, paraphrased. "The names have been changed. . ."

 

[Laurelin]

I love English class, it's such a nice break from math classes where there's only one set answer.

 

[MandyPug]

He's letting me hand this thing at 10:30am and the assignment sheet says it has to be 2000 words and roughly 6 pages. That's not gonna happen. I can't puff this thing up anymore and it'll be 4 pages tops, more likely 3 and a half pages.

Sometimes i wonder if they actually want quality work or just some quality work with mindless chatter inbetween. I can't write 6 pages on this boring book!

 

[Saeleofu]

He's letting me hand this thing at 10:30am and the assignment sheet says it has to be 2000 words and roughly 6 pages. That's not gonna happen. I can't puff this thing up anymore and it'll be 4 pages tops, more likely 3 and a half pages.

Sometimes i wonder if they actually want quality work or just some quality work with mindless chatter inbetween. I can't write 6 pages on this boring book!

Make the text 1 pt larger, and make all the margins a 16th of an inch larger. It won't add a lot, but it'll help xD