I’ve been a bookworm all my life.
Stories were my first friends and they’ve been my solace at various difficult
points throughout my life. Adults have always praised my voracious love of
reading, rare as it seems to be among my generation. People my age have, for
the most part, never understood it. My punishment when I was growing up was the
tragic confiscation of my treasured books because I liked to read to the point
of neglecting the real world (gasp! So strange, I know). I’ve had books ripped
out of my hands, thrown to the floor, and kicked down the hallway by guys who
thought it was funny. A girl in my seventh grade class once had the gall to
snap shut the open book on my lap and demand that I stop reading immediately.
I’ve gotten over these things, but
as you can see, they still stick out vividly in my memory. Despite all the
disapproval I’ve received from many of my peers, I’ve always been proud of my
love of reading and all the benefits I’ve reaped from it; they’ve served me
well all my life. But even now, with all the pettiness that was elementary
school and later high school finally behind me, I still get the occasional
wide-eyed, incredulous look when I tell people I’m specializing in English (which
really should be called Literature). “You’re crazy,” they’ll tell me. “Why
would anyone want to do that?”
Why indeed.
This is my defense of English and,
as you might be able to guess, it’s been a long time coming.
Among the many complaints I’ve
heard about English class, my favourite has to be, “the teacher is reading too
much into this. I’ll bet the author didn’t mean half the things she’s saying.”
Lately this sentiment has even been made into a humourous Facebook Venn diagram
meme thing*, which, I’ll admit, I enjoyed. But
people who complain about these things are missing the point. Here is your
brief and vastly oversimplified crash course into reader-response literary
theory: just because the author did not intend a particular interpretation of
their work doesn’t mean that meaning isn’t there to be found, or that such an
interpretation isn’t valid. You, my dear reader, bring your own meaning to each
text and I, as a writer, have very limited control over what you will take from
it, despite my best efforts. English is not about what authors mean or don’t
mean to say. It’s about what the text itself means and the ways it uses
language and so many other rhetorical and literary devices to convey that
meaning. The author is important, yes. But language is a curious, slippery
thing that makes it so that the author’s meaning is not the only one that
exists or matters.
Another common criticism I’ve
encountered (most often from my father) is that it is too subjective. You can
say whatever you want and you have to be taken seriously. All you need to get a
good grade is to be able to say it well. There is no way to be wrong. Sometimes
I hear the inverse – no matter what you say, it is impossible to get a good
mark. I can’t really deny the claim to subjectivity. Art is by its nature subjective,
and the only defense that I have is that it wouldn’t be art otherwise. Any
attempt to understand it on objective grounds would fail to truly appreciate
it. Different people are going to read and understand things differently, so
no, there is no right answer. But that doesn’t mean there is no point. What
people don’t seem to understand is that in English you can’t actually say
whatever you want and be taken seriously. You’re entitled to your opinion,
sure, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to defend it. You have to provide
evidence for why the text puts forth whatever you it is you claim it does.
There is such a thing as a wrong reading: if there is no evidence for your
claim then there is a very good chance there is something you did not understand.
To those of you out there that
don’t understand why anyone would choose to torture themselves by studying this
subject intensively for 4-5 years, let me tell you why I like English.
Analyzing a text goes far beyond finding whatever it is a text is saying on the
surface (although sometimes figuring that out can be difficult enough, cough-Chaucer-cough.
Shudder.). It’s also about determining HOW the text says what it does, and how
that presentation affects the meaning for the reader. Different contexts give
words different meanings. The same sentence will take on a different
implication entirely if you change the speaker. And believe it or not, language
is not as precise as you may think it to be. Anytime you are deciphering a
message - written or spoken - you are choosing from a wide array of different
possible meanings, as well as implications and connotations. Language is fickle
and fluid and anything but exact. Because of this, it is immensely satisfying
for me to be able to delve into a text and pry loose subtle and significant
meanings that weren’t immediately obvious, but still undeniably there. To me,
the best professors are the ones who either point to something I thought I
understood and make me see it in a new light, or those who make me fully
appreciate a text I absolutely hated when I read it on my own.
I am a curious person by nature; I
always want to know why. I always
want to know why things are the way they are and how they work. English is like
a puzzle, a mystery to be solved. You have many cues and hints, all of which
you’re not sure how or if they fit together but you have to reason your way
through it in order to uncover what the story is really saying beneath that
surface level. It forces you to look past the obvious and discover the
mechanics that are whirring away behind the scenes. It makes you gather the
evidence and fit it into the scope of the bigger picture, and it isn’t until you
do so that you will understand why literature matters.
Many people might disagree with me,
but I think English (Literature) is important. People write for a reason, and
it isn’t always petty, trivial, or intended to make money. We have classics for
a reason – something about these stories resonates with us. The most brilliant
explanation I’ve heard of why Arts in general matter came from Noah Richler, son of famous Canadian author Mordecai Richler. He said: “Novelists
and storytellers - as well as painters, musicians, playwrights, poets, and
architects - give form to the times and places that we occupy. They tell us
about ourselves – and we have much to learn if we listen. The arts are not an
indulgence.” This is exactly why I love to study stories. They are about people
and how they go about living their lives. It is a removed perspective that
features fictional characters that represent our society and ourselves; we can
be critical about them, and by extension, ourselves. Socrates is supposed to
have said, “the unexamined life is not worth living,” and I agree. I heard it
said somewhere that writers live on the fringe of society and use this vantage
point to observe the rest of us. I think we should listen to what they have to
say.
Perhaps my
favourite thing about English is that it understands that stories never dare
tell you outright what they want you to know. Instead, they show you. They
paint you a detailed picture and take you along for a ride. And when they are
done showing you, they let you decide for yourself what it all means. If you’re
someone who likes easy, clear-cut answers then English isn’t for you. As for
me, I like the journey every bit as much as the destination, and this is why I
can get lost in a book for hours on end. I’m not only interested in how the
story ends, but how it gets to that ending and if it does it well. And I don’t
mind how much thinking I might have to do along the way.
* For those of
you that don’t know, the Facebook meme thing I’m referring to said something
along the lines of – sentence in the book: the curtains were blue. What my
teacher thinks this means: The curtains represent the character’s isolation and
depression. What the author meant: the curtains were fucking blue.
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