Analysis! Blah!

I think I explained this pretty well in "The Light of the Sun." So, here's me complaining about analysis through Will.


Will groaned and sat back in his chair. He hated homework. Some of it just seemed so pointless! It was getting late, and he still hadn’t finished his English homework. He used to like English before they started analyzing literature. Analyzing was the most useless thing in the world! What did he care what the “deep underlying meanings” of a poem were? What was a poem about a pitchfork supposed to tell you about life? Why did he have to write an entire essay analyzing the hidden meanings in a pitchfork poem? And since there were no wrong answers as long as you provided evidence, that made the whole thing even more pointless. Why analyze things in a story that the author hadn’t intended? What if the author hadn’t wanted it analyzed at all? Will knew that if he ever wrote a story, he would never want kids to be forced to sit in a classroom all day, trying to figure out what “hidden meanings” he’d supposedly stuck in it. It was so easy to BS something that had no meaning whatsoever.
Will was about to graduate high school. He was tall with light brown hair and pale green eyes. Most people said he was very serious, and only his very close friends ever saw his more open side. He had learned to put up a sort of protective mask to shield himself from his family.
Will hissed in annoyance and shut off his computer. He had had enough of making up analysis for “The Pitchfork.” How did the teacher know that the author of the poem had any hidden meaning in the poem at all? What if the teacher was fooling the whole class into believing that authors stuck hidden information into their books? All the good books Will had read had seemed perfectly normal to him. As long as they were good stories that were written well, what did he care if they had “hidden meaning?
All the books they’d been forced to read in school were terrible. Well, Shakespeare had been at least tolerable. And Mark Twain was good. But what was with “Lord of the Flies”?! He absolutely loathed that book. And even though he had read it in freshmen year of high school-three years ago-he hated it as much now as he did then. Maybe more. Why would anyone want to read about a bunch of little boys getting stranded on an island and murdering each other? And why would anyone want to believe that humans were naturally evil? Humans were animals, and no animal is evil from birth. The only reason humans sometimes seem evil is because society has trained them to be selfish and greedy.
Will sat still for a minute, gazing longingly out of his bedroom window without seeing what the view held. He felt an incredible longing to get out of this crazy routine of life: wake up, go to school, learn things you’ll never need in real life, come home, work for hours on homework that is completely pointless, and then go to sleep. Why couldn’t he have some adventure! Would the rest of his life be so pointless? What would happen if he flew out of his window, away into the night?


So, this is pretty much me (except for the appearance and the stuff about his family, and the fact that I'm not a boy). Everything he says here I agree with. But the thing is, my english teachers are awesome! I have nothing against them. Just about analyzing. In fact, my english teacher in my sophomore year of high school, Mr. Daniel, has read a lot of my stories and given me good advice about them. (I'm basing a character off of him for the story about Briena. I do that with a lot of my characters) I sent him Shifter a little while ago, even though I don't go to high school anymore. I'm a college person now.... sigh. But I still go back to visit people. I know more people there (Like Stephanie and Kelly) than I do in college yet... Yeah. I like reading, and I like my english teachers. But I don't like analyzing. And I hated the books we had to read in high school. They were all really dirty or had characters that you ended up hating or both. For me to like a story, it has to be well-written AND a fun read. I don't care if it's written well if the plot is terrible. ANd even a great story can be ruined by a bad writer.
Oh jeez! Don't get me started on Lord of the Flies! I absolutely loathed that book! Who wants to read about a bunch of boys getting stuck on an island and murdering each other! I'm sorry if you liked this book, but I really hated it. And I HATED how they said that humans are naturally evil. That is so not true! Society is what makes humans jerks. And if you disagree, just contemplate this. As much as we'd like to think otherwise, humans are animals. And no animal is ever born evil. I had a nice long debate with George about this. And nothing anyone says will change my mind. No offense, but if you believe humans are evil, don't tell me about it. That always ruins my day when someone says something like that to me. Ok... I'm cool. I'm calm. Got it.
And I swear, we had to write an essay about a pitchfork. Ask Ellen. Or Nicole. Technically it was about an essay about a poem about a pitchfork, but still. THink about that. "An essay about a pitchfork." Not that I have anything against the poem, but I hate essays in general. Well, at least essays that involve analysis. And the teachers say that there's no wrong answer in an analysis as long as you can prove it, but not everyone's reading of a text is going to be the same, so they can't all be right! Grrr! I think they're hallucinating, or something. And how is learning to analyze going to help you in your life? That's what I want to know.
Hahahahah! I just realized how ironic this is! I'm sitting here, analyzing what I wrote as I explain it to you guys, and I'm also telling you that I hate analysis! But yeah. I promise, you don't have to analyze anything in my stories. Your teachers are fooling you if they tell you there's hidden stuff in my stories. They're just supposed to be fun to read. And If I have and "deep" stuff, I'll discuss it with you all on the blog. Or it will be really obvious.
And haven't you ever wanted to fly out our window and go on an adventure? I does! For that scene where Will's "gazing longingly" out of his window, I was trying to copy that image from Star Wars 4 where Luke is looking out over the double sunset, wishing he could get out his boring life as a farmer. I don't think mine is quite as poignant though. Sigh. Well, I'm done rambling for now.