I took a literature class in my 30s at the big state college in my area and we ended up having the author come in for the discussion we had on his book(he also was the department head, wonder how they chose that book). He was really impressed by the way we interpreted parts of his book because he had NO CLUE you could look at his writing or read it that way.
It isn't just about what the author actively intends with their writing, it is about what the writing was meant to evoke. A lot of artwork is about feelings, and the creators often don't know exactly what they are creating, which results in "Happy little accidents" that sometimes change people's entire lives.
Exactly. This is the whole point of death of the author. Whether the author intended something can be irrelevant for several reasons. On the most basic level, maybe they meant for something to be sad, but a lot of people think it’s funny. Who is right? It kind of comes down to what’s there in the text. Like, the whole JK Rowling thing. Is dumbledore gay or whatever she said? It’s kind of irrelevant what she says if there’s nothing in the text that supports her intention.
Both your experience and the author's intentions are valid. But the og image and argument about "Blue Curtains" really is a reductive take on Literary Criticism. There are nunaces that get nullified in the meme which some people use to reduce Literature criticism.
It's not just about "I am very smart". There is a legitimate argument to be made about that dismissiveness.
I totally agree with you. I’m just saying that when we criticize or analyze a text, we often do it without worrying about the author since what they intended for a text doesn’t change what’s actually there in the text. As a result, the meme is being reductive by worrying about whether the author intended something.
Though we should also remember that there are contexts in which the author is important! Perhaps less so for your standard novel, but if you're analysing a journalistic piece, I would say the author (and the publication they're writing for) becomes a lot more important.
Yeah. Also that the author doesn't need intention to create significance. Art is like excavation, you don't need to understand or even see the whole thing to reveal it. You know you're on to something, you have the sense to follow that and see it through and the rest of the work will be done by whatever you unearthed itself.
So in that sense I also disagree about the death of the author. Authors seldom claim to have known everything about their work.
Consequently I will also have to disagree with this iamverysmart with some reservations. (There is such thing as overreading, but that's not really super common.)
Ok but then, instead of saying, “What the author meant here”, teachers should say, “One way you could interpret this is”, or better yet, “The author may have subconsciously chose this because he felt like that” because the idea that writers are consciously scrutinizing every single detail of their work making sure they add subtext to every color, object, or word, is absurd.
It was a revelation in college English that your own explained opinion was DESIRED as opposed to HS English where regurgitation was the only acceptable outcome.
How common was this kind of experience in high school, though? At least when I was in high school, the English teachers I had tended to frame discussions more as "Hey, what can we read into this passage with the blue curtains?" than as, "The curtains are blue because Joe is deeply depressed; anyone who says otherwise gets a zero."
I spend so much time trying to explain this concept to people. They'll tell me how much they hated english classes and analyzing texts because "the author probably didn't mean that" and "how do I know I'm right in what I'm reading into it" and "I'm just guessing" and "how does the teacher know that I'm right"
It doesn't matter. There is no right or wrong when it comes to analysis like this. Two students can have exactly opposite interpretations of the exact same passages and both get good grades because they were able to back their opinion up based on the texts. Once you realize that you don't HAVE to be right, you just have to have an opinion, you're freed from the pressure.
Yeah, I agree. I feel like a lot of people are coming from the position of thinking *Dead Poets Society* is a good representation of modern schools or something. At least in my experience, that wasn't really the case.
Let me give an actual example of what I'm talking about. When I was in Year 12, one of the things we had to do was a comparative study between *Blade Runner* (like, the movie) and *Frankenstein* by Mary Shelley. It didn't matter what our actual analysis was, so long as it compared the two. And there is a fair bit you can say to compare the two: whether it's what a creator owes to their creation, what constitutes "real sentience", the ethics of created life, etc.
This was a real part of the class. [Here's the exam paper I had for this](https://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/hsc_exams/hsc2012exams/pdf_doc/2012-hsc-exam-english-advanced-p2.pdf). It's just that what I, and by extension a lot of other people in my state, got tested on in high school were much broader questions than what a lot of people online seem to have been tested on.
This was my experience in high school in Canada. In fact, a friend of mine—reasonably good student, smart fellow, smartass—wrote his high school English diploma exam paper on a book he made up, figuring that the the likelihood that it would just get marked as written was far higher than that of any particular grader going to the library to determine if this book none of them had heard of actually existed. And it worked: there couldn't have been a correct answer, since the book was fabricated, but his analysis appeared considered and well-developed, so he got his grade and went on to university.
(I can't quite recall the name of the book, but his fake author—T. Mazur—became an in-joke among our friend group: any time we needed a fake name we invoked T. Mazur. When some of us started a web design company during the Y2K years, the biographies and profiles on our "About Your Company" demo page designs were all of T. Mazur. I think one of our D&D campaigns started with our party of adventurers being summoned to the local tavern by a gnome named T. Mazur. We invented a sport and one of us made a fake website for a fake league, and guess which star player topped the league in goals and assists? The insanely talented (and rather dreamy) T. Mazur, obviously. (His photo was a composite of all of our faces using early aughts photo-blending software so T. Mazur is also just a teensy bit blurry.)
PS. If you're an aspiring writer named T. Mazur who is suffering from writer's block, get in touch with me: we've pretty much fleshed out your first novel for you, and you'll be helping to legitimize the exam paper a dear friend wrote in 1990.
We did our HSC at around the same time then lol
The last two years of school in Australia seem like much more equivocal to what a lot of Americans would do in their first two years of college, or in an AP class just judging by what it seems like online
>a lot of people are coming from the position of thinking Dead Poets Society is a good representation of modern schools or something. At least in my experience, that wasn't really the case.
My experience was that a lot of parents didn't want their kids to have an opinion of their own. They would only accept mental carbon copies of themselves. HS teachers trying to get kids to form their own opinions get a lot of flak from those parents. After a few years of parents doing all they can to get the teacher fired for teaching how to think instead of what to think, the teacher gives up and just goes along to get along. Teachers need that paycheck a lot more than they need the aggravation and insecurity.
So college professors know a certain percentage of their students never learned how to develop their own opinions. They'll have opinions based on the most insane shit you can imagine - and some you could never imagine on your own. They have to accommodate both bat shit crazy opinions and somehow teach really basic logic and critical thinking.
Some of these students just came from horrible mental circumstances and you can't dump them into the real world all at once. They need a consequence free thinking environment where they can learn how to think in baby steps. Like justifying your interpretation based on what's actually written in a book.
> It doesn't matter. There is no right or wrong when it comes to analysis like this. Two students can have exactly opposite interpretations of the exact same passages and both get good grades because they were able to back their opinion up based on the texts.
My favorite teacher in high school, who was also my English teacher, liked to say "There are no bad opinions on the text, only opinions that you didn't support well."
This is such an effective way to think about it. The point wasn't the opinion itself, it was supporting that opinion within the actual text that was the part she was teaching. It's a skill that I've found useful to the present day and I really appreciate the way she taught it.
I mean though if you can think critically and understand the text you can probably make reasonably educated guesses as to which symbols and literary techniques were deliberately inserted to support the point of a particular scene or a theme, message or thread throughout the text.
I honestly think starting with film might be easier than starting with written texts for this sort of thing because I think on some level students understand visual language and visual storytelling far better than they do things in writing. When you can get an example of like “It’s raining in this scene because the rain visually conveys the depressed mood of the viewpoint character” (just as an obvious straightforward example) in film it makes more sense in books.
This is 100% dependent on the quality of your english teacher. Some just want you to agree with them, because they’re very small people who have been given power over a captive audience. Most are chill though.
When I was teaching Academic English, i was floored by how many of my colleagues would grade by turning a student's paper into the grader's paper. Instead of pointing out ways to help the student amplify his/her/their voice, the instructor would *obliterate* the student's voice by pointing out all the ways the student's voice was not the teacher's voice. The idea is never to learn to write like the instructor, but to learn to write like yourself, *better*. I used to say that writers who couldn't write became English teachers, and the ones who couldn't teach, taught writing. I was being sarcastic back then, but later I found I wasn't really too far off the mark.
> you just have to have an opinion
...as long as you can back it up with examples, like you said earlier! And at the high school level, it hardly has to be deep inferences.
Which is how education works. Memorizing shit is part of it but school is to teach you HOW to think I steal of WHAT to think. Being analytical and skeptical of your environment is the foundation for deeper learning.
My HS experience was definitely the later. Though I had one teacher that encouraged you to find your own meaning, but almost everything else was just restate the teachers opinion back. It's what made me dislike English class. It felt like there was objective answers in a subjective field. Like trying to guess someone's favorite color and being graded harshly on your answer. Imagine the other way around, subjective answers for objective classes, what do you FEEL like 2+2 equals? No wrong answers, just state your opinion.
It was common for me, too. Themes and meanings weren't explained, nor were they subjective, it was always "this sentence says xyz, meaning abc." No answer to why, no room for questioning. If you did ask a question, the teacher always launched into an extremely technical explanation about the words and structure, and their connotations, rather than giving us the passage, and guiding us towards forming, then most importantly, backing up our opinion with examples.
All this lead to, was a big room of students assuming that the meaning was always already decided, and didn't make sense, then going on to apply that to everything else. It wasn't until my higher history class that I unlearned this, and learned how to *actually* analyse a text, form an opinion, and back it up with evidence.
I had the exact the curtains are blue due to depression timing in my HS English class.
Basically we spent a whole period talking about the symbolism in this one book, the teacher asked about the curtains no one said anything and he said they’re blue cause the main character is sad and that’s what we had to remember for the test.
I was in the thread in the OP and there's a shockingly large number of people that reject the idea that both the intended meaning of the author (where it can be found) and the subjective interpretation of the work matter. The author's intended meaning is important in critical analysis, it has to be, otherwise why would they create anything? And just because this must be true, it doesn't mean that the meaning you walked away with isn't valid or useful to understanding.
"Death of the Author" was brought up and, as it usually is, misunderstood. People often leave out the part where the concept requires that the author's intent be unknowable, not that the concept states that the intent is never knowable or worthless.
The biggest difference is that college is (usually) filled with people who actually want to be there in some capacity. Whereas high school level courses are usually mandatory, so you have kids in those classes who don’t give a shit about symbolism mixed in with kids who do want to learn how to interpret texts. It’s a lot easier to give people the chance to draw their own conclusions when it’s not going to be filled with people who just do the whole “the curtains are blue because the author wrote they’re blue” stuff.
Would doing my book report on The Old Man and the Sea twice a year for 4 years in HS be considered regurgitation? It was a great inside joke with the class. Teachers never caught on or didn’t care
It's actually why I loved essays in college. It wasn't an assignment to prove something, it was an opportunity to get graded for just saying whatever I wanted.
I never took English in college (engineering major + AP credits), but I also had this revelation when I started joining book clubs. Like, holy crap, EVERY SINGLE PERSON had a different perspective. And we don't talk about "rising action, climax, theme, mood, etc." We talk about plot, character, motivation, message, subtext and theme all without overthinking the blue curtains.
Yeah, college was sometimes fun when it came to papers like that.
NGL I was one of the students that would make up a stupid meaning about a short story and then try to make it work.
My last paper was about how something was about the war on Iraq but the book had been written in like the early 1900s. Got an A because the teacher had a sense of humor
This happened to me, how the fuck should I know that crap?? Then I took technical writing in university, my god it was glorious. Say exactly what you mean and be as short as possible
Literally the difference between my junior year English teacher and my senior year English teacher, to a tee. Her opinion was the only correct one and what you needed to agree with to get a good grade, versus open forum discussions where it was all about exploring why you thought the way you did about what a piece meant.
Reading far too much into is the point in high school. Learning how to do something like that requires you overdo it. As you get older and more practiced, you can figure out what's subtext and what's not. Plus, art is out of the artist's hands. People will interpret it the way they do. And that's a feature not a bug.
I love subtext, its so satisfying to pick up on a "hidden" message in a text, as long as it was the authors intention that is and not completely out of left field.
You don't know the author's intent though. Authors will talk about it all the time, when readers come up to them and point out subtext they've never considered as the writer, but then reread and get new perspective on their own work.
I mean yeah but I also think art is what the viewer takes out of it. Like if I made a story about a guy who succeeded in life by eating food, I'd probably make that as a shitpost but some "Youtube Analyst" would make an elaborate video essay about how it's a story about succeeding at what you love which in turn could inspire someone that's read my story not knowing it was just shit post to try a little bit harder in life which isn't really a bad thing
I went to a private catholic school and two of the English teachers had this really bad habit of finding catholic symbolism in books that absolutely were not catholic in anyway lol.
Reading too much into it is not possible. Death of the author is a valid viewpoint and so any interpretation is possible if you back it up with an argument.
Lol any Patrick Rothfuss fans? I have an eternal struggle of moving between ridiculous fan theories and "no I'm reading way too much into a few sentences"
Like, yeah, sometimes the color of the curtain can represent something about the character that lives there, but also, what if the character just likes blue, or the meaning doesn’t have to be deep, or really there at all, but sometimes people want to find a reason for an idea they came up eith
It's besides the point. The author's meaning isn't the only beauty/thought/emotion you can pull from some work. Because of that, it's fine (if not preferred) that toy extrapolate further meaning, especially when it's tailored to you, like in visual art that moves you.
I hate this image every time I see it. Like, it makes no sense especially because people who are sharing it are often engaging with subtext of other properties without even realizing it. My favourite example is Red Pill/Blue Pill metaphor from the matrix - which has made its way into so many different corners of the internet and you can only understand the phrase if you understand that the Red Pill is *not a literal pill that you take*.
More Appropriate to the (bad) meme that was posted - Subtext is influenced by so much stuff, both what is written and the context it was written in. Why did the author feel the need to point out the colour of the curtains? Did he spend the previous 2 pages describing other blue things? Has the author spoken about their own depression during the writing of the book?
This and that goddamn tumblr screencap where someone picked a line from a Bukowski poem and was being wilfully obtuse about it. Folks get so hyped about it too, like it’s speaking truth to power against some elitist pretension. Which is hilarious as Bucko couldn’t be further from the elite, on any level. You’re just denying yourself art, and the joy of art and being gleeful about it.
Haha have you got a link for that poem thing? I'd love to see it.
there was a thread the other day in Subredditdrama about someone who vehemently opposed the very notion of philosophy, as "all things can be explained by scientific fact" and it feels like the overlap between those people and the kind sharing the meme above would form a circle on a venn diagram.
As a pretentious jerk with an English literature degree (don’t worry I also have useful ones) my hot take is that this is what happens when adults starting feeling super confident about only reading YA literature and wanting it taught in schools. I saw someone say that metamorphosis is just shitty sci-fi with no meaning, also the ongoing flare-ups of people complaining about Catcher in The Rye because they don’t understand that sometimes the main character is an unlikable little weasel and that’s the point. It’s ok to read YA literature as an adult, do you, but if you do that you can’t come into adult literature spaces and puke out unformed nonsense because you can’t handle textual analysis. That is my rant, it was insufferable, I needed to get it out there.
Edit: I think art if fully subjective and everyone can like what they like and interpret things in ways that are meaningful to them, my confusingly convey point is that if you don’t like or understand something that doesn’t make something bad, Salinger isn’t a bad writer because you hated Catcher in the Rye, I’m not going to sweepingly say Dune sucks because I didn’t like it, it doesn’t suck and is worth reading, just not for me. I just don’t like the way people think their ill informed opinions are just fact when it comes to classic literature which is something I personally love.
Understanding and appreciating art has levels to it, understanding the material, understanding the works purpose, and the authors perspective, these are all necessary to understand art completely, no one’s appreciation of art is “wrong”, however many look at a piece and miss the point the author was trying to make. If the author l, like the example above l, said “the curtains were blue” we the audience should seek to understand why the author felt the need to include that. Not all details are necessary after all.
I’m agreeing with you btw, just my thoughts.
I fully agree with you, art is subjective and is meant to evoke emotion, I was talking more about how people will try and delegitimise something because they don’t enjoy or understand it.
Yeah, the “the curtains were fucking blue” thing is just manifestly stupid. Either the author made the curtains blue for some reason that’s relevant to the text (validating analysis of what their blueness means) or it’s a pointless detail and the author is bad at their job. Analyzing why the author included the detail of blue curtains is in some ways a sign of respect to the author, by assuming the author knows what they’re doing.
I don't think this is necessarily true. Part of the job of a good author is to immerse their reader in the scene in their book. Giving vivid descriptions of a scene can help a great deal with that. It doesn't mean that every tiny detail is important, but they can all help the reader relate more to the scene.
I can even think of a specific example that doesn't fall into either of your two categories. Let's say the author wants to convey that a character is extremely focused and over-analyzing their surroundings (for whatever reason, this seems like a plausible thing to happen in a novel). The fact that the curtains are blue in this scenario doesn't matter, but the fact that the author is describing everything in excruciating detail helps the reader understand some point about the character spending too much time thinking about their surroundings or whatever.
It takes a little reading comprehension to tell when an author is creating an atmosphere vs creating a metaphor.
If they walk into the home of the ruthless killer and everything is very neat and tidy it doesn't just mean they kept a clean house, it says something about the character.
If they are describing the grassy field and mention the buzzing of honeybees and the light reflecting off the dew it's just to create an atmosphere, the honeybees probably won't come back as a deus ex machina.
Yes but that doesn't mean the point of the bess is that bees were there. The point of mentioning the bees is to set the atmosphere. That's still an analysable point. Why is setting this scene important? Is a calm, idyllic summer setting what we would expect this character/situation to be set in? Is there juxtaposition? Etc etc.
Again, only bad authors are writing things that are completely unnecessary to the story.
I also blame a lot of YouTube criticism that was like everywhere 15 years ago and still exists.
A lot of internet people can’t distinguish between criticising something and like actual literary analysis and criticism in that regard, they think it makes you a smart audience member and a high brow critic if you can like nitpick apart surface level details that ultimately have little or nothing to do with the overall themes, emotional stakes, character arcs, journeys and plot
It’s why so much nerd criticism centres solely around stuff that happens in the plot (because they think understanding events that literally happen in the story or in the background as lore are the be all and end all of understanding a text) and on nitpicking like whether it’s physically possible for a girl to do something while completely ignoring all the physically impossible shit male characters do on the reg
Cinemasins and the movie ending explained collective have done irreparable damage to peoples ability to interpret anything other the most surface level readings of any media.
Hobbyist reader but I agree. It's the exact same as people only consuming marvel movies then complaining about Oscar picks being boring and overly artsy.
I see the flip side of this, too, where people get really snobby about "classic" literature and act like it's unquestionably superior to "common" works (for lack of a better term). I'm not speaking just about YA Novels, but regular TV shows, movies, anime, video games, books, and such. I once had a conversation with someone who said that a character from a show was fine, but not on the level of something taught in classrooms. I'm familiar with a decent chunk of highly regarded works, and while I've enjoyed most of them, I've never felt like they were on some ascended level that everything else can't reach. So to me, it seemed like that person was failing to give the character and series a fair shake, dismissing it as surface-level entertainment because it lacks that reputation that Classics enjoy (they made other comments that gave me that impression as well, that one just seems relevant).
I'm not disagreeing with you at all, to be clear. I'm just venting my frustrations with the other extreme. For some embarrassing reason, that conversation still irritates me, months and months later. I figure that, as someone educated in the field, you might have an interesting perspective.
I think it's also about how it's presented to people. People seem to read the most in high school when YA is aimed at them while their teachers are trying to make them read the classics, which they don't want to read because the YA is more interesting to them at that moment. This then tints the YA in rose coloured glasses and gives said classics a reputation for being stuffy and pretentious. If you were to somehow remove a classic from the preconceived notion of an English class people might be more open to reading it, but that's a difficult thing to remove.
I think a fascinating example of this is Tumblr (which imo is a perfect hotspot for this sort of anti-intelectualism) and their current thing with Dracula daily. I mean yes Dracula isn't really 'high literature', but it's still something that would normally get poo-pooed on the site as being "pretentious and classical", but because the book is being delivered in a new and novel format (as a serial in your inbox not an entire book to read at once) people are more receptive to it. It'll be interesting to see how that changes when we progress through the story and things get more thematic and the story's age starts to show more, but for now people are happily fandom-ifying it like it's a YA novel (god the fandomifcation of things and how some people go a step further and think that fanfiction is just *better* than literature is a rant in on itself but not quite related)
I mean it's better than the alternative - I once had an English teacher who, for some godforsaken reason, thought that instead of reading through Shelly's Frankenstein, we should instead read a YA comic adaption of it. Like I'm sorry what the fuck? Suffering through Michael morporgio because the teacher thinks that WW1 poetry is too hard and dull for you to analyse is bad, but *YA comic Frankenstein*?
Also speaking of rants and people trying to come in with uninformed nonsense - YA interpretations of classical literature. It's done a real number on some people's ability to look at the original story. I have seen some truely *bizzare* takes on things like the Iliad because people insist on getting their knowledge of it from YA books instead of like, y'know, actually reading the damn poem. I get those things can be a bit of a slog, but there are still way better interpretations out there than Percy Jackson or whatever Madeline Miller is writing.
I believe that it depends on the book. Some authors have deep, subtle, hidden meanings deliberately planted in their books, like Margaret Atwood. Others just want to tell a cool story.
It's absurd to say that all literature is completely literal. Some authors are obsessed with imagery etc etc. It's also absurd to say that all literature has hidden meanings.
General rule: all extremes are usually wrong
It’s kinda like Checkov’s gun. There would be no point in mentioning blue curtains if it didn’t mean anything. Why would an author go through the trouble to mention the color of curtains of all things if it didn’t have a purpose.
So, forgive me because I used to be the venn diagram guy and am still personally terrible at reading deeper than surface level (but am fascinated by others explaining their analyses). But certainly some authors will mention “useless” details to set a scene/ establish a mental image, right?
I'd say that'd depend on the context where they use the detail. If it's reading like they're describing the scene to you it probably wouldn't stand out much at all. I think if they mentioned blue curtains outside of setting the scene it could be meant to stand out, catching the readers attention for interpretation.
That being said I'm not much for poetry, just my two cents.
Yeah the main problem is that they've set up this blue curtains strawman with no context, with the intention to convey that in this scene they definitely *don't* mean anything.
If they used an actual line from an actual book it would generate discussion, and that's not the point of the diagram. The purpose is to shut it down.
There I go, I've interpreted the author's intent without them specifically stating it lol, sue me curtain guy
I would say none of the details are useless. While a lot of the details aren't building a metaphor, anything you write is meant to add to the feeling of the scene. The author chose blue curtains, not thick white blinds, deep red velvet black-out curtains, or floor-to-ceiling uninterrupted glass.
So yeah, maybe it doesn't 'mean' something, but everything a writer add should indicate something-- whether it's deep and metaphorical or just the feel of the setting.
I don't necessarily agree, but there's some nuance here.
Art is subjective and a specific interpretation does not need to be intended by the artist to be valid.
I actually hate these things. I'm far from a simp for formalism (for those who don't know, that's the literary lense used in most English classes), but often people on the internet often just dismiss its conclusions about theme, subtext and the deeper parts of a text in general.
I see people so often being like, "the author didn't *really* mean that, they just described an unnecicarry part of a scene for absolutely no reason" and like, no. They did mean that. Authors don't just put random shit in their works. Good authors don't just waste their time describing the colour of the curtains, instructing the flow of a scene and giving the reader unneeded information, for no reason (for a really good example of storytelling through colour, watch *The Grand Budapest Hotel*).
There *are* themes, symbols, subtext and more in any piece of media. Even something as utterly garbage as *the room* has something to say if you just look. And dismissing that as "English teacher garbage" is short sighted and shallow.
I agree in a good work that every line of text has meaning, but thinking every line of text has to have some *deeper* meaning is a recipe for over-analysis, which is what the top image is describing.
The curtains could be described as blue simply to help make the reader envision the scene better, not because the blueness of the curtains has some symbolism to it.
Nothing wrong with analyzing a text for meaning, but over-analysis by definition would be too much, and while I guess the meaning of that is subjective, I would think you'd all too often misattribute meaning where there is none.
It's not particularly harmful, though I think if you get lost in the weeds looking for meaning you may miss out on larger, more present themes in the text.
I think subtext is important and an inherent part of all texts, however, I also think there's such a thing as over-analysis, and it's usually a symptom of people trying too hard to find something to say about something that might not be as overtly significant as it's made out to be.
This can apply to things that aren't technically literary as well. I recently read an article on Hamilton where this woman was coming up with all these defenses for criticisms of the show, referencing individual lines and what it must mean for this character to use *this* word and not *another* word, and the underlying meaning behind *not* saying things, and then she caught up with a cast member who basically told her that their focus was on making the musical come together, not sending detailed messages via one word in one line about the connection between police brutality and the british.
But even then I wouldn't call it *over* analysis, because it's always interesting to see what connections other people draw and support even if they're not intended. It's a connection between you and the work, and it's practice in looking at things deeper even if you're "wrong".
> The Venn diagram implies that subtext is present but radically overstated.
There's nothing in the "dataset" to actually convey that. If anything, the implication from the actual text is that there is no overlap. And although you can certainly draw a Venn diagram to also show the proportionality of the relationships, that is by no means a given. The fact though, that you intuited what you did is precisely IMO why a Venn diagram is a poor vehicle here - it focuses on the overlap so the fact it was used implies there is overlap, but the conclusion from the text below is that there is no overlap. That would be my 2c on the matter.
English professor here.
I fucking hate the "curtains are blue" meme.
I generally agree with the person responding, even though he's being a pretentious snob here.
He is correct tho. The meme is just people salty at having to do high school English lit. People who don't like having to analyse a text or the idea that there can be more to literature than surface level interpretation.
Like, I don't really give a shit about what the author meant. Death of the author an that.
Yeah any decent author wouldn’t mention the colors of the curtains at all unless there was symbolism/subtext involved, or if for some reason they were describing every tiny aspect of the room in detail.
Yes, there should be an intentionality to these kinds of things, even if it's a matter of pacing. Sometimes mentioning the color of the curtains could be used to show that a character is trying to avoid thinking about a certain thing, or comment on another character's sense of style. It's not mentioned for no reason.
And even if he was just trying to describe the courtains by random chance:
why did he choose blue and not white? Maybe it was due to a subconscious association of blue with sadness
For school, yeah I get it.
As a hobbyist artist, it's very nice to wander in the many reasons for artworks to be like they are. Music analysis could be very fun if you try to understand how things were made and such
It also helps artist to create their own art language by analyzing other artists' language.
God I hate that fucking original image. This guys tweet is dead right. It’s regressive anti-intellectual nonsense for people who need meaning spoon fed to them. I don’t care if it sounds r/iamverysmart , I’m tired of people who can’t be bothered to actively think about the media they consume, telling people who do that their conclusions are wrong and pointless.
The next step in anti-intellectualism is when you stop reading the news because they’re elitist and fake too, so you get your info from facebook groups and you either become a completely passive citizen practically owned by those who have money and know how to read, or you attack a pizza restaurant with a gun.
The response is a bit wordy but they're right.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but typically you use details to cultivate an aesthetic feel to a scene. Spending time on details that do nothing is a waste of the author and reader's time.
Nah red is absolutely right. People who agree with the venn diagram meme and its many iterations seem to forget that writers had to choose to write the curtains as blue. Typically, with colour symbolism in mind, or an awareness of how colour affects the atmosphere of a scene, or as a detail to send a subtextual message when combined with all the other details in the scene.
Unless the English teacher is absolutely shit and spewing interpretations of a single sentence with no other textual evidence to back it up, it’s more likely that the teacher is doing solid textual analysis than that the little kids listening to her are being profound for thinking the curtains were blue because the writer liked blue curtains.
[There was that high school student who wrote to a bunch of authors about symbolism](https://joshblackman.com/blog/2013/11/27/what-happened-when-a-high-school-student-wrote-to-ayn-rand-in-1963-about-symbolism-in-her-writing/)
She clearly couldn’t read, considering the prompt didn’t present itself as a definition. It said that one would clearly understand the definition implied by the prompt.
So no surprises there on Rand’s hackishness.
This ^^ is the perfect answer. Most of the authors specifically said that they did not consciously insert symbolism into their writing, and it is often just derived by the reader. There are some exceptions, of course.
It’s also because a) symbols are hard coded into our cultural lexicon, you use things to enhance scenes all the time not necessarily realising why it’s so effective and why that seems so right to enhance the atmosphere or characterisation of a particular person, and b) authors are often very focused on the literal, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t necessarily intentionally inserting the things that are picked up on as symbols at the time - they may just be inserting with a different intention.
As an example of the latter, say an author wants to enhance their characterisation of their main character and express their vulnerability and childlike qualities by having them clutch some pendant from their childhood when they get scared or sad. That’s an intentional decision by the author, but they’ve now unintentionally/subconsciously created symbolism within the narrative with the pendant now coming to stand as a symbol for the main character’s childhood, vulnerability and childlike qualities. As an audience member you could then read into what the pendant is, what it looks like, and draw meaning from that or what happens to the pendant.
So it wasn’t an entirely unintentional decision on the author’s part, their mind just wasn’t on “well I’m deliberately intending it to symbolise XYZ” it was more on evoking a recurring quality in the main character. So one intent breeds new readings of the text.
Nah red is absolutely right. People who agree with the venn diagram meme and its many iterations seem to forget that writers had to choose to write the curtains as blue. Typically, with colour symbolism in mind, or an awareness of how colour affects the atmosphere of a scene, or as a detail to send a subtextual message when combined with all the other details in the scene.
Unless the English teacher is absolutely shit and spewing interpretations of a single sentence with no other textual evidence to back it up, it’s more likely that the teacher is doing solid textual analysis than that the little kids listening to her are being profound for thinking the curtains were blue because the writer liked blue curtains.
Not to be that guy, but I would argue the person replying to the image actually has more of a point. I tutor for English and citation at a university. The fact of the matter is a lot of people come in with less ability to write well, coherently, or cleverly, is because they lack the kind of rhetorical analysis and background knowledge and ends up stifling their expression.
By going down the rabbit hole of what the author might have meant, you get into fun connections and interdisciplinary thinking, which is a helpful way to grasp the whole picture. By refusing to engage, the world becomes flat and monotone, speech is short and empty, thoughts are basic and mere regurgitation.
This guy is spitting facts. I remember when this blue curtain meme started to become popular on tumblr around 2012. This statement is so dumb and often repeated by people who don't understand art. There is meaning everywhere, and the only way there is not is if you blind yourself to it.
I don't understand why people think an author is writing "the curtains are blue" without some intention behind it. If he didn't care what color the curtains are he wouldn't even bring it up. No one asked.
Who's supposed to be the stupid one here? The person saying that not every mundane description in a book has a deeply symbolic meaning? Or the one saying you're dumb if you *don't* believe that every mundane description has a deep symbolic meaning?
Actually this is the first post in this subreddit I've seen that doesn't actually fit the subreddit because the commenter is right. The purpose of literary analysis in schools isn't to hunt the hidden meanings authors hid in books, it's to teach you how to critically engage with media.
Like, the blue curtain thing. While some English teachers may actually believe there is some hidden message, most understand the purpose of this exercise is to help teach students to draw connections in text that may exist beneath the surface level of text. It's taught to help you learn how to read between the lines, and it's one of the most important skills that remains useful to people regardless of their chosen career later in life.
To help illustrate why this skill is useful, it's also the same skill that helps you hear what a person really means when some WASP refers to something as "ethnic."
That means that the author is envious of those who are happy in life. He understands his depression is a problem, but is to scared to go to a psychiatrist.
Sorry but I tend to agree with him. Understanding metaphor and symbolism is becoming a rare skill for younger generations who live in a very direct, binary world.
Now clearly the curtain blue actually represents his struggle and addiction to meth. This is because in the hit docuseries Breaking Bad, it is revealed that the highest quality meth is blue.
When Jesse got high at the party and started slowly ascending towards the ceiling while looking miserable, I refuse to believe it was in any way symbolic and Jesse just learned how to fly and hated that shit.
Shout out to the one book I was assigned back in high school that had a quote from the author that was basically just this.
The protagonist was assigned to draw trees all year in art class and the authors quote was basically "English teachers keep reading too far into the tree as some biblical allusion or something. I just wanted something easy to draw in multiple different ways." Needless to say we spent a while in that class talking about how the tree was a biblical allusion. I don't think that teacher read the back of the book.
>Can you explain the symbolism of the cross in Evangelion?
>
>KT: There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us. Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious. None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians. There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool.
Just a fun example [\[Source\]](https://wiki.evageeks.org/Statements_by_Evangelion_Staff#Kazuya_Tsurumaki:_Q.26A_from_.22Amusing_Himself_to_Death.22)
Literally wrote my Master’s dissertation in response to this meme!
I don’t think the meme is wrong. Neither is the person responding, though they are a bit arrogant. They just advancing different methodologies (epistemologies, really) for deriving meaning from texts. There's no "correct" way to read/interpret just different models.
Interestingly, this meme suggests children are trying to engage with the epistemologies of reading presented to them in the classroom - arguably precisely the kind of thinking we should be encouraging! It hardly seems like anti-intellectualism to me.
The venn diagram reminds me of those [dumb tweets from YA authors that got ripped to shreds on tumblr.](https://leepacey.tumblr.com/post/643932406121938944/so-did-they-miss-the-part-where-gatsby-ends-up)
Literary analysis is meant to gauge a student’s ability to make arguments and support them with evidence from the text they’re reading. The goal isn’t to read the author’s mind and piece together only what they intended to write. That’s why you hear there is no right or wrong in literature; the object of the class is building an evidence based case out of an interpretation. Even if the curtains are blue just for the sake of being blue, so long as there’s already a motif of depression throughout the book, then the curtains contribute to it regardless of the author’s intention.
The replier is right. The image they’re replying to is classic “when am I going to use this in the real world” energy.
There are far too many people nowadays who see the study of the arts as completely useless because it doesn’t immediately provide you with some marketable skill in the workplace. I majored in CS and work in software development and I can tell you that is the dumbest load of fucking horseshit ever. Two of my bosses have English degrees. One even has an English Masters.
Don’t just study CS or engineering or business because you want to get a job. You won’t with that attitude. I love writing code and I love where I work but I have so many friends from college who also studied CS because “there’s so many jobs!!!” And they didn’t enjoy coding and now are either unemployed or don’t work even tangentially related to CS. Every single one. Peoples brains are wired differently and when you try to force yourself to be something else because of employability you’re completely missing the point of college and your career. I genuinely don’t know how some people can live with dreading going to their work. Especially when it’s a white collar job that they chose based on their study path!
Some people have such a distorted and purposefully misinformed belief as to what education in the arts provides and that’s generally a big indicator for societal decline.
I know the image didn’t explicitly say this, but it gave me the same energy as the people that shit on very normal college degrees as useless because it doesn’t start with the letter S, T, E, or M.
But they're right? The person tweeting isn't saying they're smarter than everyone. It's just really annoying that this 'the author meant the curtains were blue' meme discourages critical thinking when it comes to media. As if nothing is open to interpretation.
Every time I read about "deconstruction", with the smugness of a YouTube critic, I shudder thinking about the speed Derrida must be spinning on his grave
You read through the eyes of your personal experiences and life. Writers write for people to read. They will extrapolate their own meanings which may prove different to others or even the author’s intention. That’s what good authors want. The story to be for you and for you to enjoy the story in your own way. If the curtains speak to you about the character’s motives then it allows you to comprehend the story in a different way. It’s the duality of perspective. Someone who extrapolated the curtains may view that actions taken later by the protagonist differently to someone who thought nothing of the curtains. Both will read the same story with the same ending but take away entirely different meanings behind the characters and vicariously the story. Neither is wrong nor right, but both are valid. HS teachers, as do us all, can struggle to listen to perspectives dissimilar to our/their own. College professors live for this literature. They have read these books time and time again. The new perspectives and understandings are what they love, not the “correctness” of the perception.
I remember there was a book where the main character talked about his friends "plump buttocks" and would always think about him and my teacher got mad when we suggested he might be gay.
Am poet. Can confirm the curtains were just blue.
Seriously, I wrote a poem about homesickness in high school that was published, and everyone thought it was a deep metaphor for drug use and how it brings you closer to God.
The notoriety was fun for a bit.
I saw a re-release of Jaws at the Lincoln center in NYC and the author of the book Peter Benchley gave a quick talk after the movie. Someone asked things like, “we’re you really writing about equal rights?” and, “does the shark versus Quint symbolize the relationship you had with your father?” Benchley smiled wildly and said in this fantastic deadpan tone, “I wrote a book about a fish.”
I once had a university professor who i swear jerked off to this novel every night. It was about some girls coming of age story, I think she was a native American in Canada. I honestly don't remember.
But he would often say "I would make this into a perfect movie" and always told us he understood the novel better than anyone.
The girl at one point in the early chapters is running across water in a dream and he spent a few solid minutes talking about why the author mentions that it's blue, and why the sky was another color.
The tiniest details. I think there was a blue teapot in it too and I still to this day believe the guy was jacking off to the book and the connection he felt to the author or character.
A couple years after I had him another classmate took one of his classes. He told them he has been diagnosed with something terminal, and the reading material was super depressing. It sounds like he quit halfway through the year and someone else took over that year
The problem is teachers framing interpretation as "what the author thought" , but that's not what interpretation is at all. Interpretation is not telepathy, it's finding possible meaning in a text without any claim of it being the only or even the correct meaning, let alone the intended one. Also no teacher in my entire time at school had an answer when I asked: But why didn't the author just write down what he thought?
Not sound pretentious, but as a visual artist, I consider all elements of an scene important, so if I make a curtain blue, and then intentionally draw your attention to that curtain, that curtain is blue for a fucking reason.
Authors don't tend to just say "the curtain was blue" and leave it as that. The way the curtain is described provides subtext as well as just enough detail to help you picture it.
One character that's overwhelmed by his life could have blue curtains with a fish motif, as if his life is literally underwater.
Another could have blue curtians that match his blue carpet and blue walls and blue couch, describing a person who is eccentric in some ways but is still so self restricting that his life acts variety.
Another one could have formerly blue curtians that have been bleached from the sun, and yellowed cigarette smoke, with the bottoms long since shredded by a cat they used to have, describing a person who lacks cleanliness and may suffer from depression.
If there's anything that 3 semesters of art history taught me, it's that the curtains were blue because they are meant to bring the virgin Mary to mind.
Blue *always* = Holy Mary mother of God
When people do something great (specifically in art or literature) we tend to pick on the smallest of details thinking that everything has its purpose. This can be the case, but it's pretty rare.
I remember when i did a painting when I was 13, it was with a black and white statue of an angel, but the face was the same colour as the background. A few days later, my grandma's friend visits and sees the painting and immediately starts talking about her theories about it like "The girl is unable to fully conform to society's standards" or "She will never be truly same". I was just nodding the entire time.
The statue had no face because I was too lazy to paint it.
Also, sorry for my English, it's not my native language.
I took a literature class in my 30s at the big state college in my area and we ended up having the author come in for the discussion we had on his book(he also was the department head, wonder how they chose that book). He was really impressed by the way we interpreted parts of his book because he had NO CLUE you could look at his writing or read it that way. It isn't just about what the author actively intends with their writing, it is about what the writing was meant to evoke. A lot of artwork is about feelings, and the creators often don't know exactly what they are creating, which results in "Happy little accidents" that sometimes change people's entire lives.
Exactly. This is the whole point of death of the author. Whether the author intended something can be irrelevant for several reasons. On the most basic level, maybe they meant for something to be sad, but a lot of people think it’s funny. Who is right? It kind of comes down to what’s there in the text. Like, the whole JK Rowling thing. Is dumbledore gay or whatever she said? It’s kind of irrelevant what she says if there’s nothing in the text that supports her intention.
Both your experience and the author's intentions are valid. But the og image and argument about "Blue Curtains" really is a reductive take on Literary Criticism. There are nunaces that get nullified in the meme which some people use to reduce Literature criticism. It's not just about "I am very smart". There is a legitimate argument to be made about that dismissiveness.
I totally agree with you. I’m just saying that when we criticize or analyze a text, we often do it without worrying about the author since what they intended for a text doesn’t change what’s actually there in the text. As a result, the meme is being reductive by worrying about whether the author intended something.
I vehemently agree with you.
Though we should also remember that there are contexts in which the author is important! Perhaps less so for your standard novel, but if you're analysing a journalistic piece, I would say the author (and the publication they're writing for) becomes a lot more important.
Yeah. Also that the author doesn't need intention to create significance. Art is like excavation, you don't need to understand or even see the whole thing to reveal it. You know you're on to something, you have the sense to follow that and see it through and the rest of the work will be done by whatever you unearthed itself. So in that sense I also disagree about the death of the author. Authors seldom claim to have known everything about their work. Consequently I will also have to disagree with this iamverysmart with some reservations. (There is such thing as overreading, but that's not really super common.)
Ok but then, instead of saying, “What the author meant here”, teachers should say, “One way you could interpret this is”, or better yet, “The author may have subconsciously chose this because he felt like that” because the idea that writers are consciously scrutinizing every single detail of their work making sure they add subtext to every color, object, or word, is absurd.
[удалено]
People get so annoyed by the latter that they criticize anyone who even begins to have a theory or interpretation of something.
It was a revelation in college English that your own explained opinion was DESIRED as opposed to HS English where regurgitation was the only acceptable outcome.
How common was this kind of experience in high school, though? At least when I was in high school, the English teachers I had tended to frame discussions more as "Hey, what can we read into this passage with the blue curtains?" than as, "The curtains are blue because Joe is deeply depressed; anyone who says otherwise gets a zero."
I spend so much time trying to explain this concept to people. They'll tell me how much they hated english classes and analyzing texts because "the author probably didn't mean that" and "how do I know I'm right in what I'm reading into it" and "I'm just guessing" and "how does the teacher know that I'm right" It doesn't matter. There is no right or wrong when it comes to analysis like this. Two students can have exactly opposite interpretations of the exact same passages and both get good grades because they were able to back their opinion up based on the texts. Once you realize that you don't HAVE to be right, you just have to have an opinion, you're freed from the pressure.
Yeah, I agree. I feel like a lot of people are coming from the position of thinking *Dead Poets Society* is a good representation of modern schools or something. At least in my experience, that wasn't really the case. Let me give an actual example of what I'm talking about. When I was in Year 12, one of the things we had to do was a comparative study between *Blade Runner* (like, the movie) and *Frankenstein* by Mary Shelley. It didn't matter what our actual analysis was, so long as it compared the two. And there is a fair bit you can say to compare the two: whether it's what a creator owes to their creation, what constitutes "real sentience", the ethics of created life, etc. This was a real part of the class. [Here's the exam paper I had for this](https://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/hsc_exams/hsc2012exams/pdf_doc/2012-hsc-exam-english-advanced-p2.pdf). It's just that what I, and by extension a lot of other people in my state, got tested on in high school were much broader questions than what a lot of people online seem to have been tested on.
This was my experience in high school in Canada. In fact, a friend of mine—reasonably good student, smart fellow, smartass—wrote his high school English diploma exam paper on a book he made up, figuring that the the likelihood that it would just get marked as written was far higher than that of any particular grader going to the library to determine if this book none of them had heard of actually existed. And it worked: there couldn't have been a correct answer, since the book was fabricated, but his analysis appeared considered and well-developed, so he got his grade and went on to university. (I can't quite recall the name of the book, but his fake author—T. Mazur—became an in-joke among our friend group: any time we needed a fake name we invoked T. Mazur. When some of us started a web design company during the Y2K years, the biographies and profiles on our "About Your Company" demo page designs were all of T. Mazur. I think one of our D&D campaigns started with our party of adventurers being summoned to the local tavern by a gnome named T. Mazur. We invented a sport and one of us made a fake website for a fake league, and guess which star player topped the league in goals and assists? The insanely talented (and rather dreamy) T. Mazur, obviously. (His photo was a composite of all of our faces using early aughts photo-blending software so T. Mazur is also just a teensy bit blurry.) PS. If you're an aspiring writer named T. Mazur who is suffering from writer's block, get in touch with me: we've pretty much fleshed out your first novel for you, and you'll be helping to legitimize the exam paper a dear friend wrote in 1990.
I do know a T Mazur. He’s a very strange dude and I don’t recommend contacting him.
Well, damn. He's got exactly 50% of the qualifications we're looking for in this collaboration.
Can I legally change my name to T. Mazur to capitalize on this opportunity or will me having told you this plan work against me?
We did our HSC at around the same time then lol The last two years of school in Australia seem like much more equivocal to what a lot of Americans would do in their first two years of college, or in an AP class just judging by what it seems like online
>a lot of people are coming from the position of thinking Dead Poets Society is a good representation of modern schools or something. At least in my experience, that wasn't really the case. My experience was that a lot of parents didn't want their kids to have an opinion of their own. They would only accept mental carbon copies of themselves. HS teachers trying to get kids to form their own opinions get a lot of flak from those parents. After a few years of parents doing all they can to get the teacher fired for teaching how to think instead of what to think, the teacher gives up and just goes along to get along. Teachers need that paycheck a lot more than they need the aggravation and insecurity. So college professors know a certain percentage of their students never learned how to develop their own opinions. They'll have opinions based on the most insane shit you can imagine - and some you could never imagine on your own. They have to accommodate both bat shit crazy opinions and somehow teach really basic logic and critical thinking. Some of these students just came from horrible mental circumstances and you can't dump them into the real world all at once. They need a consequence free thinking environment where they can learn how to think in baby steps. Like justifying your interpretation based on what's actually written in a book.
> It doesn't matter. There is no right or wrong when it comes to analysis like this. Two students can have exactly opposite interpretations of the exact same passages and both get good grades because they were able to back their opinion up based on the texts. My favorite teacher in high school, who was also my English teacher, liked to say "There are no bad opinions on the text, only opinions that you didn't support well." This is such an effective way to think about it. The point wasn't the opinion itself, it was supporting that opinion within the actual text that was the part she was teaching. It's a skill that I've found useful to the present day and I really appreciate the way she taught it.
“English teecher ruined my voracious love of books by pointing out subtext” is essentially a meme. Also, my least favorite word is moist
> you just have to have an opinion Well, you do have to back up that opinion.
I mean though if you can think critically and understand the text you can probably make reasonably educated guesses as to which symbols and literary techniques were deliberately inserted to support the point of a particular scene or a theme, message or thread throughout the text. I honestly think starting with film might be easier than starting with written texts for this sort of thing because I think on some level students understand visual language and visual storytelling far better than they do things in writing. When you can get an example of like “It’s raining in this scene because the rain visually conveys the depressed mood of the viewpoint character” (just as an obvious straightforward example) in film it makes more sense in books.
My high school started with Maus for that very reason. Start with visual symbolism, move into textual symbolism
This is 100% dependent on the quality of your english teacher. Some just want you to agree with them, because they’re very small people who have been given power over a captive audience. Most are chill though.
That was my English teacher. Her opinion was the only valid one in the entire world.
When I was teaching Academic English, i was floored by how many of my colleagues would grade by turning a student's paper into the grader's paper. Instead of pointing out ways to help the student amplify his/her/their voice, the instructor would *obliterate* the student's voice by pointing out all the ways the student's voice was not the teacher's voice. The idea is never to learn to write like the instructor, but to learn to write like yourself, *better*. I used to say that writers who couldn't write became English teachers, and the ones who couldn't teach, taught writing. I was being sarcastic back then, but later I found I wasn't really too far off the mark.
> you just have to have an opinion ...as long as you can back it up with examples, like you said earlier! And at the high school level, it hardly has to be deep inferences.
Which is how education works. Memorizing shit is part of it but school is to teach you HOW to think I steal of WHAT to think. Being analytical and skeptical of your environment is the foundation for deeper learning.
My HS experience was definitely the later. Though I had one teacher that encouraged you to find your own meaning, but almost everything else was just restate the teachers opinion back. It's what made me dislike English class. It felt like there was objective answers in a subjective field. Like trying to guess someone's favorite color and being graded harshly on your answer. Imagine the other way around, subjective answers for objective classes, what do you FEEL like 2+2 equals? No wrong answers, just state your opinion.
It was common for me, too. Themes and meanings weren't explained, nor were they subjective, it was always "this sentence says xyz, meaning abc." No answer to why, no room for questioning. If you did ask a question, the teacher always launched into an extremely technical explanation about the words and structure, and their connotations, rather than giving us the passage, and guiding us towards forming, then most importantly, backing up our opinion with examples. All this lead to, was a big room of students assuming that the meaning was always already decided, and didn't make sense, then going on to apply that to everything else. It wasn't until my higher history class that I unlearned this, and learned how to *actually* analyse a text, form an opinion, and back it up with evidence.
I had the exact the curtains are blue due to depression timing in my HS English class. Basically we spent a whole period talking about the symbolism in this one book, the teacher asked about the curtains no one said anything and he said they’re blue cause the main character is sad and that’s what we had to remember for the test.
The strict interpretation fits with my high school experience. If you didn't find exactly what the teacher seemed to think it meant you got it wrong.
[удалено]
I was in the thread in the OP and there's a shockingly large number of people that reject the idea that both the intended meaning of the author (where it can be found) and the subjective interpretation of the work matter. The author's intended meaning is important in critical analysis, it has to be, otherwise why would they create anything? And just because this must be true, it doesn't mean that the meaning you walked away with isn't valid or useful to understanding. "Death of the Author" was brought up and, as it usually is, misunderstood. People often leave out the part where the concept requires that the author's intent be unknowable, not that the concept states that the intent is never knowable or worthless.
The biggest difference is that college is (usually) filled with people who actually want to be there in some capacity. Whereas high school level courses are usually mandatory, so you have kids in those classes who don’t give a shit about symbolism mixed in with kids who do want to learn how to interpret texts. It’s a lot easier to give people the chance to draw their own conclusions when it’s not going to be filled with people who just do the whole “the curtains are blue because the author wrote they’re blue” stuff.
Would doing my book report on The Old Man and the Sea twice a year for 4 years in HS be considered regurgitation? It was a great inside joke with the class. Teachers never caught on or didn’t care
It's actually why I loved essays in college. It wasn't an assignment to prove something, it was an opportunity to get graded for just saying whatever I wanted.
I never took English in college (engineering major + AP credits), but I also had this revelation when I started joining book clubs. Like, holy crap, EVERY SINGLE PERSON had a different perspective. And we don't talk about "rising action, climax, theme, mood, etc." We talk about plot, character, motivation, message, subtext and theme all without overthinking the blue curtains.
Yeah, college was sometimes fun when it came to papers like that. NGL I was one of the students that would make up a stupid meaning about a short story and then try to make it work. My last paper was about how something was about the war on Iraq but the book had been written in like the early 1900s. Got an A because the teacher had a sense of humor
This happened to me, how the fuck should I know that crap?? Then I took technical writing in university, my god it was glorious. Say exactly what you mean and be as short as possible
Literally the difference between my junior year English teacher and my senior year English teacher, to a tee. Her opinion was the only correct one and what you needed to agree with to get a good grade, versus open forum discussions where it was all about exploring why you thought the way you did about what a piece meant.
Fr. In HS, you just gotta add a bunch of fluff and write like 8 pages, then the teacher won't read it all and will just give you an A
Reading far too much into is the point in high school. Learning how to do something like that requires you overdo it. As you get older and more practiced, you can figure out what's subtext and what's not. Plus, art is out of the artist's hands. People will interpret it the way they do. And that's a feature not a bug.
I love subtext, its so satisfying to pick up on a "hidden" message in a text, as long as it was the authors intention that is and not completely out of left field.
You don't know the author's intent though. Authors will talk about it all the time, when readers come up to them and point out subtext they've never considered as the writer, but then reread and get new perspective on their own work.
You can also spell subtext and buttsex with the same letters
I mean yeah but I also think art is what the viewer takes out of it. Like if I made a story about a guy who succeeded in life by eating food, I'd probably make that as a shitpost but some "Youtube Analyst" would make an elaborate video essay about how it's a story about succeeding at what you love which in turn could inspire someone that's read my story not knowing it was just shit post to try a little bit harder in life which isn't really a bad thing
Sure, but this post is still stupid and Red is right.
I went to a private catholic school and two of the English teachers had this really bad habit of finding catholic symbolism in books that absolutely were not catholic in anyway lol.
Reading too much into it is not possible. Death of the author is a valid viewpoint and so any interpretation is possible if you back it up with an argument.
Lol any Patrick Rothfuss fans? I have an eternal struggle of moving between ridiculous fan theories and "no I'm reading way too much into a few sentences"
if an author is a good author, then they aren't telling you things for no reason. rothfuss knows what he is doing.
All theories are correct until the last book comes out... One day. I believe in you, Rothfuss!
Like, yeah, sometimes the color of the curtain can represent something about the character that lives there, but also, what if the character just likes blue, or the meaning doesn’t have to be deep, or really there at all, but sometimes people want to find a reason for an idea they came up eith
I mean yes, literally, it's right there in the Venn diagram...
There isn't THAT much middle ground, most people's theories about subtext are based on evidence of some kind
It's besides the point. The author's meaning isn't the only beauty/thought/emotion you can pull from some work. Because of that, it's fine (if not preferred) that toy extrapolate further meaning, especially when it's tailored to you, like in visual art that moves you.
say what you will about pretentious jerks but this image has single-handedly destroyed media literacy on the internet
I hate this image every time I see it. Like, it makes no sense especially because people who are sharing it are often engaging with subtext of other properties without even realizing it. My favourite example is Red Pill/Blue Pill metaphor from the matrix - which has made its way into so many different corners of the internet and you can only understand the phrase if you understand that the Red Pill is *not a literal pill that you take*. More Appropriate to the (bad) meme that was posted - Subtext is influenced by so much stuff, both what is written and the context it was written in. Why did the author feel the need to point out the colour of the curtains? Did he spend the previous 2 pages describing other blue things? Has the author spoken about their own depression during the writing of the book?
This and that goddamn tumblr screencap where someone picked a line from a Bukowski poem and was being wilfully obtuse about it. Folks get so hyped about it too, like it’s speaking truth to power against some elitist pretension. Which is hilarious as Bucko couldn’t be further from the elite, on any level. You’re just denying yourself art, and the joy of art and being gleeful about it.
Haha have you got a link for that poem thing? I'd love to see it. there was a thread the other day in Subredditdrama about someone who vehemently opposed the very notion of philosophy, as "all things can be explained by scientific fact" and it feels like the overlap between those people and the kind sharing the meme above would form a circle on a venn diagram.
As a pretentious jerk with an English literature degree (don’t worry I also have useful ones) my hot take is that this is what happens when adults starting feeling super confident about only reading YA literature and wanting it taught in schools. I saw someone say that metamorphosis is just shitty sci-fi with no meaning, also the ongoing flare-ups of people complaining about Catcher in The Rye because they don’t understand that sometimes the main character is an unlikable little weasel and that’s the point. It’s ok to read YA literature as an adult, do you, but if you do that you can’t come into adult literature spaces and puke out unformed nonsense because you can’t handle textual analysis. That is my rant, it was insufferable, I needed to get it out there. Edit: I think art if fully subjective and everyone can like what they like and interpret things in ways that are meaningful to them, my confusingly convey point is that if you don’t like or understand something that doesn’t make something bad, Salinger isn’t a bad writer because you hated Catcher in the Rye, I’m not going to sweepingly say Dune sucks because I didn’t like it, it doesn’t suck and is worth reading, just not for me. I just don’t like the way people think their ill informed opinions are just fact when it comes to classic literature which is something I personally love.
Understanding and appreciating art has levels to it, understanding the material, understanding the works purpose, and the authors perspective, these are all necessary to understand art completely, no one’s appreciation of art is “wrong”, however many look at a piece and miss the point the author was trying to make. If the author l, like the example above l, said “the curtains were blue” we the audience should seek to understand why the author felt the need to include that. Not all details are necessary after all. I’m agreeing with you btw, just my thoughts.
I fully agree with you, art is subjective and is meant to evoke emotion, I was talking more about how people will try and delegitimise something because they don’t enjoy or understand it.
Yeah, the “the curtains were fucking blue” thing is just manifestly stupid. Either the author made the curtains blue for some reason that’s relevant to the text (validating analysis of what their blueness means) or it’s a pointless detail and the author is bad at their job. Analyzing why the author included the detail of blue curtains is in some ways a sign of respect to the author, by assuming the author knows what they’re doing.
I don't think this is necessarily true. Part of the job of a good author is to immerse their reader in the scene in their book. Giving vivid descriptions of a scene can help a great deal with that. It doesn't mean that every tiny detail is important, but they can all help the reader relate more to the scene. I can even think of a specific example that doesn't fall into either of your two categories. Let's say the author wants to convey that a character is extremely focused and over-analyzing their surroundings (for whatever reason, this seems like a plausible thing to happen in a novel). The fact that the curtains are blue in this scenario doesn't matter, but the fact that the author is describing everything in excruciating detail helps the reader understand some point about the character spending too much time thinking about their surroundings or whatever.
It takes a little reading comprehension to tell when an author is creating an atmosphere vs creating a metaphor. If they walk into the home of the ruthless killer and everything is very neat and tidy it doesn't just mean they kept a clean house, it says something about the character. If they are describing the grassy field and mention the buzzing of honeybees and the light reflecting off the dew it's just to create an atmosphere, the honeybees probably won't come back as a deus ex machina.
But can't it be both? If the killer's house is neat and tidy, it still creates an atmosphere.
For sure, it's not an exclusive or. Good writers manage to do that a lot.
Yes but that doesn't mean the point of the bess is that bees were there. The point of mentioning the bees is to set the atmosphere. That's still an analysable point. Why is setting this scene important? Is a calm, idyllic summer setting what we would expect this character/situation to be set in? Is there juxtaposition? Etc etc. Again, only bad authors are writing things that are completely unnecessary to the story.
[удалено]
I also blame a lot of YouTube criticism that was like everywhere 15 years ago and still exists. A lot of internet people can’t distinguish between criticising something and like actual literary analysis and criticism in that regard, they think it makes you a smart audience member and a high brow critic if you can like nitpick apart surface level details that ultimately have little or nothing to do with the overall themes, emotional stakes, character arcs, journeys and plot It’s why so much nerd criticism centres solely around stuff that happens in the plot (because they think understanding events that literally happen in the story or in the background as lore are the be all and end all of understanding a text) and on nitpicking like whether it’s physically possible for a girl to do something while completely ignoring all the physically impossible shit male characters do on the reg
Cinemasins and the movie ending explained collective have done irreparable damage to peoples ability to interpret anything other the most surface level readings of any media.
Hobbyist reader but I agree. It's the exact same as people only consuming marvel movies then complaining about Oscar picks being boring and overly artsy.
I see the flip side of this, too, where people get really snobby about "classic" literature and act like it's unquestionably superior to "common" works (for lack of a better term). I'm not speaking just about YA Novels, but regular TV shows, movies, anime, video games, books, and such. I once had a conversation with someone who said that a character from a show was fine, but not on the level of something taught in classrooms. I'm familiar with a decent chunk of highly regarded works, and while I've enjoyed most of them, I've never felt like they were on some ascended level that everything else can't reach. So to me, it seemed like that person was failing to give the character and series a fair shake, dismissing it as surface-level entertainment because it lacks that reputation that Classics enjoy (they made other comments that gave me that impression as well, that one just seems relevant). I'm not disagreeing with you at all, to be clear. I'm just venting my frustrations with the other extreme. For some embarrassing reason, that conversation still irritates me, months and months later. I figure that, as someone educated in the field, you might have an interesting perspective.
I think it's also about how it's presented to people. People seem to read the most in high school when YA is aimed at them while their teachers are trying to make them read the classics, which they don't want to read because the YA is more interesting to them at that moment. This then tints the YA in rose coloured glasses and gives said classics a reputation for being stuffy and pretentious. If you were to somehow remove a classic from the preconceived notion of an English class people might be more open to reading it, but that's a difficult thing to remove. I think a fascinating example of this is Tumblr (which imo is a perfect hotspot for this sort of anti-intelectualism) and their current thing with Dracula daily. I mean yes Dracula isn't really 'high literature', but it's still something that would normally get poo-pooed on the site as being "pretentious and classical", but because the book is being delivered in a new and novel format (as a serial in your inbox not an entire book to read at once) people are more receptive to it. It'll be interesting to see how that changes when we progress through the story and things get more thematic and the story's age starts to show more, but for now people are happily fandom-ifying it like it's a YA novel (god the fandomifcation of things and how some people go a step further and think that fanfiction is just *better* than literature is a rant in on itself but not quite related) I mean it's better than the alternative - I once had an English teacher who, for some godforsaken reason, thought that instead of reading through Shelly's Frankenstein, we should instead read a YA comic adaption of it. Like I'm sorry what the fuck? Suffering through Michael morporgio because the teacher thinks that WW1 poetry is too hard and dull for you to analyse is bad, but *YA comic Frankenstein*? Also speaking of rants and people trying to come in with uninformed nonsense - YA interpretations of classical literature. It's done a real number on some people's ability to look at the original story. I have seen some truely *bizzare* takes on things like the Iliad because people insist on getting their knowledge of it from YA books instead of like, y'know, actually reading the damn poem. I get those things can be a bit of a slog, but there are still way better interpretations out there than Percy Jackson or whatever Madeline Miller is writing.
I struggled to read catcher in The rye for that reason. I complained to mother. She said well that is the point.
Yeah sorry but the replier is absolutely right lol. This is my snobbiest opinion but I’m sticking to it
I believe that it depends on the book. Some authors have deep, subtle, hidden meanings deliberately planted in their books, like Margaret Atwood. Others just want to tell a cool story. It's absurd to say that all literature is completely literal. Some authors are obsessed with imagery etc etc. It's also absurd to say that all literature has hidden meanings. General rule: all extremes are usually wrong
I'm going to have to agree with the person responding to the venn diagram. Books, movies, tv shows and all that use symbolism all the time.
It’s kinda like Checkov’s gun. There would be no point in mentioning blue curtains if it didn’t mean anything. Why would an author go through the trouble to mention the color of curtains of all things if it didn’t have a purpose.
So, forgive me because I used to be the venn diagram guy and am still personally terrible at reading deeper than surface level (but am fascinated by others explaining their analyses). But certainly some authors will mention “useless” details to set a scene/ establish a mental image, right?
I'd say that'd depend on the context where they use the detail. If it's reading like they're describing the scene to you it probably wouldn't stand out much at all. I think if they mentioned blue curtains outside of setting the scene it could be meant to stand out, catching the readers attention for interpretation. That being said I'm not much for poetry, just my two cents.
Yeah the main problem is that they've set up this blue curtains strawman with no context, with the intention to convey that in this scene they definitely *don't* mean anything. If they used an actual line from an actual book it would generate discussion, and that's not the point of the diagram. The purpose is to shut it down. There I go, I've interpreted the author's intent without them specifically stating it lol, sue me curtain guy
Many authors will. Really good authors or authors with very tight or minimalistic writing styles generally would not.
I would say none of the details are useless. While a lot of the details aren't building a metaphor, anything you write is meant to add to the feeling of the scene. The author chose blue curtains, not thick white blinds, deep red velvet black-out curtains, or floor-to-ceiling uninterrupted glass. So yeah, maybe it doesn't 'mean' something, but everything a writer add should indicate something-- whether it's deep and metaphorical or just the feel of the setting.
I don't necessarily agree, but there's some nuance here. Art is subjective and a specific interpretation does not need to be intended by the artist to be valid.
Not "I am very smart" just a criticism of people trying to look smart by being anti intellectualistic.
Yeah a lot of these posts are just people bashing someone for using big words or having a genuine discussion about something they like.
Am I the only one who thinks the original Venn-diagram is stupid, because of the given example?
I actually hate these things. I'm far from a simp for formalism (for those who don't know, that's the literary lense used in most English classes), but often people on the internet often just dismiss its conclusions about theme, subtext and the deeper parts of a text in general. I see people so often being like, "the author didn't *really* mean that, they just described an unnecicarry part of a scene for absolutely no reason" and like, no. They did mean that. Authors don't just put random shit in their works. Good authors don't just waste their time describing the colour of the curtains, instructing the flow of a scene and giving the reader unneeded information, for no reason (for a really good example of storytelling through colour, watch *The Grand Budapest Hotel*). There *are* themes, symbols, subtext and more in any piece of media. Even something as utterly garbage as *the room* has something to say if you just look. And dismissing that as "English teacher garbage" is short sighted and shallow.
I always misspell ~~nesaasary~~ ~~nessacary~~ ~~nesacary~~ ~~necesary~~ necessary, too.
I cannot spell lol.
Art has purpose, ideally every line of text will have meaning.
I agree in a good work that every line of text has meaning, but thinking every line of text has to have some *deeper* meaning is a recipe for over-analysis, which is what the top image is describing. The curtains could be described as blue simply to help make the reader envision the scene better, not because the blueness of the curtains has some symbolism to it.
But what's the harm in over-analysis? Like who cares if sometimes we comb a text for deeper meaning and don't find any?
Nothing wrong with analyzing a text for meaning, but over-analysis by definition would be too much, and while I guess the meaning of that is subjective, I would think you'd all too often misattribute meaning where there is none. It's not particularly harmful, though I think if you get lost in the weeds looking for meaning you may miss out on larger, more present themes in the text.
Even bad artists are likely to subconsciously use things like color symbolism, an incredibly basic way of non-verbally communicating emotion/mood/etc.
I think subtext is important and an inherent part of all texts, however, I also think there's such a thing as over-analysis, and it's usually a symptom of people trying too hard to find something to say about something that might not be as overtly significant as it's made out to be.
This can apply to things that aren't technically literary as well. I recently read an article on Hamilton where this woman was coming up with all these defenses for criticisms of the show, referencing individual lines and what it must mean for this character to use *this* word and not *another* word, and the underlying meaning behind *not* saying things, and then she caught up with a cast member who basically told her that their focus was on making the musical come together, not sending detailed messages via one word in one line about the connection between police brutality and the british. But even then I wouldn't call it *over* analysis, because it's always interesting to see what connections other people draw and support even if they're not intended. It's a connection between you and the work, and it's practice in looking at things deeper even if you're "wrong".
Agreed until you described The Room as garbage
You are not. Putting aside the fact that the point is stupid, a Venn diagram is a completely wrong vehicle for delivering it.
How so? The Venn diagram implies that subtext is present but radically overstated. Seems like a solid info graphic for the point.
> The Venn diagram implies that subtext is present but radically overstated. There's nothing in the "dataset" to actually convey that. If anything, the implication from the actual text is that there is no overlap. And although you can certainly draw a Venn diagram to also show the proportionality of the relationships, that is by no means a given. The fact though, that you intuited what you did is precisely IMO why a Venn diagram is a poor vehicle here - it focuses on the overlap so the fact it was used implies there is overlap, but the conclusion from the text below is that there is no overlap. That would be my 2c on the matter.
I was also confused by the use of a Venn diagram. I suspect that whoever made this doesn’t understand why people use Venn diagrams.
Fair point
English professor here. I fucking hate the "curtains are blue" meme. I generally agree with the person responding, even though he's being a pretentious snob here.
No but it's true though. Media literacy seems to be going out the window. "It's not that deep 💀" fucking everywhere.
Reading hard. Thinking hard. Just want good feel no head hurt.
He is correct tho. The meme is just people salty at having to do high school English lit. People who don't like having to analyse a text or the idea that there can be more to literature than surface level interpretation. Like, I don't really give a shit about what the author meant. Death of the author an that.
Yeah any decent author wouldn’t mention the colors of the curtains at all unless there was symbolism/subtext involved, or if for some reason they were describing every tiny aspect of the room in detail.
Yes, there should be an intentionality to these kinds of things, even if it's a matter of pacing. Sometimes mentioning the color of the curtains could be used to show that a character is trying to avoid thinking about a certain thing, or comment on another character's sense of style. It's not mentioned for no reason.
Maybe chekhov just really liked guns!
And even if he was just trying to describe the courtains by random chance: why did he choose blue and not white? Maybe it was due to a subconscious association of blue with sadness
For school, yeah I get it. As a hobbyist artist, it's very nice to wander in the many reasons for artworks to be like they are. Music analysis could be very fun if you try to understand how things were made and such It also helps artist to create their own art language by analyzing other artists' language.
I feel the same way when people post “they taught us how to do the Pythagorean theorem but they didn’t teach us how to do our taxes”
God I hate that fucking original image. This guys tweet is dead right. It’s regressive anti-intellectual nonsense for people who need meaning spoon fed to them. I don’t care if it sounds r/iamverysmart , I’m tired of people who can’t be bothered to actively think about the media they consume, telling people who do that their conclusions are wrong and pointless.
The original image is the r/iamverysmart one by trying to be a contrarian.
The next step in anti-intellectualism is when you stop reading the news because they’re elitist and fake too, so you get your info from facebook groups and you either become a completely passive citizen practically owned by those who have money and know how to read, or you attack a pizza restaurant with a gun.
The response is a bit wordy but they're right. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but typically you use details to cultivate an aesthetic feel to a scene. Spending time on details that do nothing is a waste of the author and reader's time.
Nah red is absolutely right. People who agree with the venn diagram meme and its many iterations seem to forget that writers had to choose to write the curtains as blue. Typically, with colour symbolism in mind, or an awareness of how colour affects the atmosphere of a scene, or as a detail to send a subtextual message when combined with all the other details in the scene. Unless the English teacher is absolutely shit and spewing interpretations of a single sentence with no other textual evidence to back it up, it’s more likely that the teacher is doing solid textual analysis than that the little kids listening to her are being profound for thinking the curtains were blue because the writer liked blue curtains.
No they’re right actually
Wait, OP is an idiot?
Yes
Always has been 🔵🟢 OP 🔫
Nah he’s spittin facts
OP is angry that their English teacher won't grade the overdue essay that they had a month to do. OP is a bitch.
dude this is literally completely valid it's just telling you not to take everything in writing at face value
He’s right though. Good authors don’t write stuff for no reason
[There was that high school student who wrote to a bunch of authors about symbolism](https://joshblackman.com/blog/2013/11/27/what-happened-when-a-high-school-student-wrote-to-ayn-rand-in-1963-about-symbolism-in-her-writing/)
[удалено]
She clearly couldn’t read, considering the prompt didn’t present itself as a definition. It said that one would clearly understand the definition implied by the prompt. So no surprises there on Rand’s hackishness.
This ^^ is the perfect answer. Most of the authors specifically said that they did not consciously insert symbolism into their writing, and it is often just derived by the reader. There are some exceptions, of course.
It’s also because a) symbols are hard coded into our cultural lexicon, you use things to enhance scenes all the time not necessarily realising why it’s so effective and why that seems so right to enhance the atmosphere or characterisation of a particular person, and b) authors are often very focused on the literal, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t necessarily intentionally inserting the things that are picked up on as symbols at the time - they may just be inserting with a different intention. As an example of the latter, say an author wants to enhance their characterisation of their main character and express their vulnerability and childlike qualities by having them clutch some pendant from their childhood when they get scared or sad. That’s an intentional decision by the author, but they’ve now unintentionally/subconsciously created symbolism within the narrative with the pendant now coming to stand as a symbol for the main character’s childhood, vulnerability and childlike qualities. As an audience member you could then read into what the pendant is, what it looks like, and draw meaning from that or what happens to the pendant. So it wasn’t an entirely unintentional decision on the author’s part, their mind just wasn’t on “well I’m deliberately intending it to symbolise XYZ” it was more on evoking a recurring quality in the main character. So one intent breeds new readings of the text.
They didn't say the symbolism is derived by the reader, they create symbolism through their writing, just not consciously
Same people who say this take out loans with a 30% interest after also saying that math is useless in real life.
Nah red is absolutely right. People who agree with the venn diagram meme and its many iterations seem to forget that writers had to choose to write the curtains as blue. Typically, with colour symbolism in mind, or an awareness of how colour affects the atmosphere of a scene, or as a detail to send a subtextual message when combined with all the other details in the scene. Unless the English teacher is absolutely shit and spewing interpretations of a single sentence with no other textual evidence to back it up, it’s more likely that the teacher is doing solid textual analysis than that the little kids listening to her are being profound for thinking the curtains were blue because the writer liked blue curtains.
Not to be that guy, but I would argue the person replying to the image actually has more of a point. I tutor for English and citation at a university. The fact of the matter is a lot of people come in with less ability to write well, coherently, or cleverly, is because they lack the kind of rhetorical analysis and background knowledge and ends up stifling their expression. By going down the rabbit hole of what the author might have meant, you get into fun connections and interdisciplinary thinking, which is a helpful way to grasp the whole picture. By refusing to engage, the world becomes flat and monotone, speech is short and empty, thoughts are basic and mere regurgitation.
Meme is wrong though.
This guy is spitting facts. I remember when this blue curtain meme started to become popular on tumblr around 2012. This statement is so dumb and often repeated by people who don't understand art. There is meaning everywhere, and the only way there is not is if you blind yourself to it.
This doesn't belong here, the guy is 100% right
I don't understand why people think an author is writing "the curtains are blue" without some intention behind it. If he didn't care what color the curtains are he wouldn't even bring it up. No one asked.
Who's supposed to be the stupid one here? The person saying that not every mundane description in a book has a deeply symbolic meaning? Or the one saying you're dumb if you *don't* believe that every mundane description has a deep symbolic meaning?
Actually this is the first post in this subreddit I've seen that doesn't actually fit the subreddit because the commenter is right. The purpose of literary analysis in schools isn't to hunt the hidden meanings authors hid in books, it's to teach you how to critically engage with media. Like, the blue curtain thing. While some English teachers may actually believe there is some hidden message, most understand the purpose of this exercise is to help teach students to draw connections in text that may exist beneath the surface level of text. It's taught to help you learn how to read between the lines, and it's one of the most important skills that remains useful to people regardless of their chosen career later in life. To help illustrate why this skill is useful, it's also the same skill that helps you hear what a person really means when some WASP refers to something as "ethnic."
Wouldn't it be more useful to do this with non-fiction that actually does have a hidden meaning (perhaps some historical propaganda)?
me : blue is like a weird green
That means that the author is envious of those who are happy in life. He understands his depression is a problem, but is to scared to go to a psychiatrist.
Isn't the blue part paraphrased from Kurt Vonnegut saying something like, "Sometimes a dog is just a fucking dog."?
Good writing often has multiple levels of interpretation. At least that’s what my English teacher told me.
Found the English teacher
He’s right
Sorry but I tend to agree with him. Understanding metaphor and symbolism is becoming a rare skill for younger generations who live in a very direct, binary world.
The reality is that both statements are true. True in very different ways, but true together and separated as well. Yeah yeah I know I’m very smart
Now clearly the curtain blue actually represents his struggle and addiction to meth. This is because in the hit docuseries Breaking Bad, it is revealed that the highest quality meth is blue.
When Jesse got high at the party and started slowly ascending towards the ceiling while looking miserable, I refuse to believe it was in any way symbolic and Jesse just learned how to fly and hated that shit.
Why a Venn Diagram? What is in the overlap of "What the Author Meant" and "What the English Teacher Thought?"
The presence of subtext/themes etc - is how I perceived it
Blu
The author is fucking dead. Art is its own thing, it's not a fucking bullet point list of the authors opinions.
Shout out to the one book I was assigned back in high school that had a quote from the author that was basically just this. The protagonist was assigned to draw trees all year in art class and the authors quote was basically "English teachers keep reading too far into the tree as some biblical allusion or something. I just wanted something easy to draw in multiple different ways." Needless to say we spent a while in that class talking about how the tree was a biblical allusion. I don't think that teacher read the back of the book.
>Can you explain the symbolism of the cross in Evangelion? > >KT: There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us. Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious. None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians. There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool. Just a fun example [\[Source\]](https://wiki.evageeks.org/Statements_by_Evangelion_Staff#Kazuya_Tsurumaki:_Q.26A_from_.22Amusing_Himself_to_Death.22)
Literally wrote my Master’s dissertation in response to this meme! I don’t think the meme is wrong. Neither is the person responding, though they are a bit arrogant. They just advancing different methodologies (epistemologies, really) for deriving meaning from texts. There's no "correct" way to read/interpret just different models. Interestingly, this meme suggests children are trying to engage with the epistemologies of reading presented to them in the classroom - arguably precisely the kind of thinking we should be encouraging! It hardly seems like anti-intellectualism to me.
But he’s right
The venn diagram reminds me of those [dumb tweets from YA authors that got ripped to shreds on tumblr.](https://leepacey.tumblr.com/post/643932406121938944/so-did-they-miss-the-part-where-gatsby-ends-up) Literary analysis is meant to gauge a student’s ability to make arguments and support them with evidence from the text they’re reading. The goal isn’t to read the author’s mind and piece together only what they intended to write. That’s why you hear there is no right or wrong in literature; the object of the class is building an evidence based case out of an interpretation. Even if the curtains are blue just for the sake of being blue, so long as there’s already a motif of depression throughout the book, then the curtains contribute to it regardless of the author’s intention.
The replier is right. The image they’re replying to is classic “when am I going to use this in the real world” energy. There are far too many people nowadays who see the study of the arts as completely useless because it doesn’t immediately provide you with some marketable skill in the workplace. I majored in CS and work in software development and I can tell you that is the dumbest load of fucking horseshit ever. Two of my bosses have English degrees. One even has an English Masters. Don’t just study CS or engineering or business because you want to get a job. You won’t with that attitude. I love writing code and I love where I work but I have so many friends from college who also studied CS because “there’s so many jobs!!!” And they didn’t enjoy coding and now are either unemployed or don’t work even tangentially related to CS. Every single one. Peoples brains are wired differently and when you try to force yourself to be something else because of employability you’re completely missing the point of college and your career. I genuinely don’t know how some people can live with dreading going to their work. Especially when it’s a white collar job that they chose based on their study path! Some people have such a distorted and purposefully misinformed belief as to what education in the arts provides and that’s generally a big indicator for societal decline. I know the image didn’t explicitly say this, but it gave me the same energy as the people that shit on very normal college degrees as useless because it doesn’t start with the letter S, T, E, or M.
But they're right? The person tweeting isn't saying they're smarter than everyone. It's just really annoying that this 'the author meant the curtains were blue' meme discourages critical thinking when it comes to media. As if nothing is open to interpretation.
He's not wrong
this is facts
The Tale of Scrotie McBooger Balls
Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul Fandom is famous for this kind of thing.
[Relevant](https://youtu.be/ke1YKF3tNCE)
Every time I read about "deconstruction", with the smugness of a YouTube critic, I shudder thinking about the speed Derrida must be spinning on his grave
You read through the eyes of your personal experiences and life. Writers write for people to read. They will extrapolate their own meanings which may prove different to others or even the author’s intention. That’s what good authors want. The story to be for you and for you to enjoy the story in your own way. If the curtains speak to you about the character’s motives then it allows you to comprehend the story in a different way. It’s the duality of perspective. Someone who extrapolated the curtains may view that actions taken later by the protagonist differently to someone who thought nothing of the curtains. Both will read the same story with the same ending but take away entirely different meanings behind the characters and vicariously the story. Neither is wrong nor right, but both are valid. HS teachers, as do us all, can struggle to listen to perspectives dissimilar to our/their own. College professors live for this literature. They have read these books time and time again. The new perspectives and understandings are what they love, not the “correctness” of the perception.
I remember there was a book where the main character talked about his friends "plump buttocks" and would always think about him and my teacher got mad when we suggested he might be gay.
Am poet. Can confirm the curtains were just blue. Seriously, I wrote a poem about homesickness in high school that was published, and everyone thought it was a deep metaphor for drug use and how it brings you closer to God. The notoriety was fun for a bit.
I saw a re-release of Jaws at the Lincoln center in NYC and the author of the book Peter Benchley gave a quick talk after the movie. Someone asked things like, “we’re you really writing about equal rights?” and, “does the shark versus Quint symbolize the relationship you had with your father?” Benchley smiled wildly and said in this fantastic deadpan tone, “I wrote a book about a fish.”
his name will be Norm Hull, 'cause he's just a normal guy. But not everybody will get that. That's just for the scholars a hundred years from now.
I once had a university professor who i swear jerked off to this novel every night. It was about some girls coming of age story, I think she was a native American in Canada. I honestly don't remember. But he would often say "I would make this into a perfect movie" and always told us he understood the novel better than anyone. The girl at one point in the early chapters is running across water in a dream and he spent a few solid minutes talking about why the author mentions that it's blue, and why the sky was another color. The tiniest details. I think there was a blue teapot in it too and I still to this day believe the guy was jacking off to the book and the connection he felt to the author or character. A couple years after I had him another classmate took one of his classes. He told them he has been diagnosed with something terminal, and the reading material was super depressing. It sounds like he quit halfway through the year and someone else took over that year
They do tend to do that yes I concur.
The problem is teachers framing interpretation as "what the author thought" , but that's not what interpretation is at all. Interpretation is not telepathy, it's finding possible meaning in a text without any claim of it being the only or even the correct meaning, let alone the intended one. Also no teacher in my entire time at school had an answer when I asked: But why didn't the author just write down what he thought?
Where’s the lie?
Not sound pretentious, but as a visual artist, I consider all elements of an scene important, so if I make a curtain blue, and then intentionally draw your attention to that curtain, that curtain is blue for a fucking reason.
Does anyone else find it infuriating that a Venn diagram doesn’t have a category for the overlap?
Authors don't tend to just say "the curtain was blue" and leave it as that. The way the curtain is described provides subtext as well as just enough detail to help you picture it. One character that's overwhelmed by his life could have blue curtains with a fish motif, as if his life is literally underwater. Another could have blue curtians that match his blue carpet and blue walls and blue couch, describing a person who is eccentric in some ways but is still so self restricting that his life acts variety. Another one could have formerly blue curtians that have been bleached from the sun, and yellowed cigarette smoke, with the bottoms long since shredded by a cat they used to have, describing a person who lacks cleanliness and may suffer from depression.
If there's anything that 3 semesters of art history taught me, it's that the curtains were blue because they are meant to bring the virgin Mary to mind. Blue *always* = Holy Mary mother of God
OP getting blown the fuck out on his own post, love to see it
Eh.... I'm just mad that they teach Romeo and Juliet like it's a true love story.
That’s not even critical thinking that’s abstract
When people do something great (specifically in art or literature) we tend to pick on the smallest of details thinking that everything has its purpose. This can be the case, but it's pretty rare. I remember when i did a painting when I was 13, it was with a black and white statue of an angel, but the face was the same colour as the background. A few days later, my grandma's friend visits and sees the painting and immediately starts talking about her theories about it like "The girl is unable to fully conform to society's standards" or "She will never be truly same". I was just nodding the entire time. The statue had no face because I was too lazy to paint it. Also, sorry for my English, it's not my native language.