Garbage that they teach you in AP classes

[mal4mac]

Isn't it obvious that the river represents freedom? Do you need some, likely boring, teacher harping on forever about obvious symbolism. Every hour you spend listening to the boring teacher could be spent actually reading Twain, or (if you feel you need some help) a great critic. Here's a sentence from a neat, two page, review by Harold Bloom:

"Huck is Adam early in the morning, a fresh start in the Evening Land that is the United States. European man is fallen; Huck ..."

.. is not just a boy.

[ennison]

"If we look, for example, at Heart of Darkness: the river is not just a river. The same goes for Huckleberry Finn: the river is definitely not just a river."

Exactly. As someone or other said, "Of course it's not straightforward dear, it's reading".

I paraphrase liberally

[Drkshadow03]

Every hour you spend listening to the boring teacher could be spent actually reading Twain

In class? You make it sound like the teacher talking about the book in class is somehow cutting into the student's reading time outside of school.

Isn't it obvious that the river represents freedom?

Not necessarily to a student still cutting their teeth on literature for the first time. They need much more guidance.

(if you feel you need some help) a great critic. Here's a sentence from a neat, two page, review by Harold Bloom:

"Huck is Adam early in the morning, a fresh start in the Evening Land that is the United States. European man is fallen; Huck ..."

.. is not just a boy.

I wouldn't really call Harold Bloom a great a critic. He had had his heyday, and I'm not saying he's a bad critic, but like JBI I am starting to find it frightening how many people here (especially you, Mac) worship Bloom like he is some kind of literary god.

Really people should be working on developing their own unique reactions and perspectives on literature rather than endlessly miming their teachers or the great critics.

[spookymulder93]

I actually just got done reading The Pearl by John Steinbeck which I got from the thrift store and it had all these notes in it about the irony and symbolism and other analysis stuff and I couldn't help but to think to myself that this must suck ALL the fun out of reading the book.

I still think that unless the author says it's something more, a river is just a river dude.

[_Shannon_]

I actually just got done reading The Pearl by John Steinbeck which I got from the thrift store and it had all these notes in it about the irony and symbolism and other analysis stuff and I couldn't help but to think to myself that this must suck ALL the fun out of reading the book.

I still think that unless the author says it's something more, a river is just a river dude.

I dunno that I would say that reading The Pearl is....fun......lol! That book kicked my butt! I have rarely wept at a book as I did when I finished The Pearl.

But I completely agree--the way that literature is taught is so divergent with how literature is read. It destroys many people's desire to read anything other than popular fiction. For summer reading now there is often a book assigned entitled How To Read Literature Like A Professor....and I just want to scream, "Nooooooooo!". I mean do want to ensure that high school kids never pick up a great book ever again after they leave school??

I don't deny that there is symbolism and allegory, theme and point of view etc. in novels and poetry--but dissecting a work of literature with such scientific precision so often seems to just destroy those parts of writing which we cannot quantify--the parts which build our souls and stretch us as human beings.

[stlukesguild]

There is a difference between studying a book and simply reading a book for pleasure. There are also different levels of reading. I've always liked the old Lex Luthor quote from Superman: Some people can read "War and Peace" and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe. The professor of literature's or the literary critic's experience of reading is not the same as the high-school student's no more than my experience of painting after years of art school and years working as an artist/art educator is the same as it was when I first walked into an art museum at age 16. Reading... books change according to the experiences you bring to them. The average high-school student struggles with the language of Shakespeare or even Dickens. After years of reading older literature (including Shakespeare and Dickens... Spenser and Chaucer) what was once a struggle, is now a pleasure... and I can grasp the beauty and flow of the language. When you are formally studying a work of literature, you are developing experience in different ways of reading... learning what to look for... learning that a book is about more than plot and character... its about language, and symbol, and formal structure, and atmosphere, etc... I don't understand the very idea that someone would imagine that having a deeper grasp of an art form would somehow take the joy out of the experience. Somehow I don't imagine that the professor of literature enjoys reading any less than the composer or the conductor enjoys music, or than the artist enjoys art. Indeed, I might suggest that they enjoy aspects and elements of reading that completely elude those with less experience.

[spookymulder93]

What if someone doesn't care about the "language, and symbol, and formal structure, and atmosphere, etc" they just want to read a good book that may or may not give them some insight into there own life.

It's kind of like when I took my film studies class. I mean the different symbols and directing techniques the professor pointed out to us were cool and informative, but it'd be a cold day in hell before I sat down and studied a movie like that in my free time, unless by some chance I decide to direct a movie.

But it's all summed up by the fact that we're all different.

[Drkshadow03]

What if someone doesn't care about the "language, and symbol, and formal structure, and atmosphere, etc" they just want to read a good book that may or may not give them some insight into there own life.

It's kind of like when I took my film studies class. I mean the different symbols and directing techniques the professor pointed out to us were cool and informative, but it'd be a cold day in hell before I sat down and studied a movie like that in my free time, unless by some chance I decide to direct a movie.

But it's all summed up by the fact that we're all different.

This is a bit trickier though than someone sitting down and going out of their way to "study" a film or book or whatever. As someone with a literature degree, I don't just turn it on when I feel like it. I almost always notice language, symbols, formal structures, and atmosphere, etc. naturally as I read a book for pleasure. Not to mention noticing these elements makes the book more pleasurable for me.

[stlukesguild]

This is a bit trickier though than someone sitting down and going out of their way to "study" a film or book or whatever. As someone with a literature degree, I don't just turn it on when I feel like it. I almost always notice language, symbols, formal structures, and atmosphere, etc. naturally as I read a book for pleasure. Not to mention noticing these elements makes the book more pleasurable for me.

Exactly. It is just reading taken to a further level and when learned it comes natural and is not something that one is overly conscious about. When one first learns to read, one employs phonics... sounds out unfamiliar words, looks up the meaning of words that one doesn't know. With time, one no longer needs to employ such strategies much. With time and experience symbols, form, language, references to other literary works or to historical events and persons no longer make great demands upon the reader. I am currently reading Dante once again. I personally find the reading quite easy... and pleasurable... for I no longer need to struggle with all the complexities (the references, the history, the form) that once was of the greatest degree of difficulty. I might also mention that some of us do not read as an alternative to television. Some of us actually rise to the challenge of a difficult work... we gain a degree of pleasure from it... just as some garner a degree of pleasure from solving a crossword puzzle or playing a game of chess. Other simply want their pleasures handed to them... like so much mental pablum.

[JBI]

The goal is to get to the point where you need as few reference works as possible to understand a text to a satisfactory level, the level of course various with people. If I read, I don't even think about plot, theme, character, etc. unless I am reading something which uses different conventions, such as Spenser's Faerie Queene, whose characters are Allegorical figures, rather than realist characters, so they pose to the reader a bit of an uncomfortable grounding in interpretation.

But in general, the goal of learning all those terms, is so that you can apply them without thinking. It is not as if those are difficult terms; there are far, far more difficult terms, especially when you get into specialized fields.

In general, most people don't need to know what an anaphoric or cataphoric novel structure is. Still, the basics are required. Though the AP classes from what I understand don't teach basic terms, like Vehicle and Tenor.

[IceM]

I feel more and more like AP courses undermine their students. Although I'm off on some of my interpretations of literature, those moments are seldom; I, like many in our AP program, are advanced readers. It seems to me like teachers baby their students through curriculum, practically giving away "appropriate" interpretations of literature, if such inferences are possible.

To me, teachers should notify students of the recommeded reading ahead of time and let students fend for themselves. Essentially, give the students the books and have them make their own interpretations. My 10th Grade Honors teacher opposed my interpretation of Antigone even though both mine and his "standardly accepted one" were both equally defendable through the text.

Of course, books have intended purposes; Siddhartha wasn't meant to encourage others to be naturalists as much as it preached patience as a pathway to enlightenment. Nevertheless, I always support allowing students to deduce their own opinions rather than accept "professionally sponsored opinions," as long own's own thoughts are equally defendable through excerpts from the text. I'm tired of being force-fed opinions that aren't relevant to me because someone outside of my understanding (although being a professional in the field) thinks their understanding trumps mine.

[Evaril]

Psychology, or psychoanalysis as founded by Freud, certainly has solid grounds for its existence and investigations, but whether its present assumptions are true and precise or not, I am unwilling to comment.

[ktm5124]

What's all this emphasis on interpretation? The point of reading a book is not to create an interpretation, or arrive at a universal interpretation - interpret nothing! if a novel is written in English and English is your native language then it is already translated, already "interpreted".

The point is to say something interesting about the story in an essay, and if it is to be interesting then it must first be interesting to you, thus every essay is rooted in a personal reaction, an impression upon the reader, and the job of the essay is to reflect this impression onto the objective world. The word "interpretation" has been loaded so full of meaning that it no longer has any meaning, and it often becomes synonymous with "bull****ting".

A professor of literature once said to my class that the goal of the critic is to increase the reading pleasure of others. This is quite at odds with the lab technician image of a professor carrying forceps. And I think that as a corollary to this, the goal of the teacher - college professor, high school teacher, whatever - should be to increase the reading pleasure of his or her students. If the teacher is not doing this, then he/she is failing at his/her job.

[Drkshadow03]

What's all this emphasis on interpretation? The point of reading a book is not to create an interpretation, or arrive at a universal interpretation - interpret nothing! if a novel is written in English and English is your native language then it is already translated, already "interpreted".

The point is to say something interesting about the story in an essay, and if it is to be interesting then it must first be interesting to you, thus every essay is rooted in a personal reaction, an impression upon the reader, and the job of the essay is to reflect this impression onto the objective world. The word "interpretation" has been loaded so full of meaning that it no longer has any meaning, and it often becomes synonymous with "bull****ting".

A professor of literature once said to my class that the goal of the critic is to increase the reading pleasure of others. This is quite at odds with the lab technician image of a professor carrying forceps. And I think that as a corollary to this, the goal of the teacher - college professor, high school teacher, whatever - should be to increase the reading pleasure of his or her students. If the teacher is not doing this, then he/she is failing at his/her job.

Personal reaction/interpretation. I call BS semantic games. When you're giving your personal reaction you're giving your interpretation of the events of a book. Personal reaction is just a different way of saying "interpretation."

The point of reading a book is to enjoy yourself and possibly open yourself up more to the world around you.

[pooteeweet]

As a student you study the work -- some of your colleagues may need more assistance than you and you shouldn’t fall into the trap that most English majors do by thinking that you are above anybody else in the room. Go to class, study the work, encourage others, learn a thing or two, and move on. No need to argue or put anybody down.

Enjoy the class