And by public, I guess I'm mostly referring to the poor souls who are sitting in classes that force them to read different content and analyze the heck out of them.
Because I (and not for the first time in my life) am currently in one of those courses.
And I find myself to be in a very interesting situation. Not only am I a mature adult, but I also am an avid writer, and do consider myself to be an author. (For those who don't know, I am big on writing: all throughout this blog, you can read different short stories that I have written, and I am also currently working on completing and publishing my first book!)
So really, whenever I pick up a work of literature, I wear two hats: a reader who is a part of the audience, and an author, who has pulled a chair up next to the work's author, shared a few beers with, and written the story.
That's really how I read things.
Now, technically, I have only been writing and working on improving my art for a little over a decade now. But because I'm a serious writer, there are some things I notice when my classes are analyzing works that kind of make me chuckle a little.
Now, of course, there are some author's who have works of literature that are extremely dense, with numerous different implications and meanings that are hidden behind each word.
But rest assure, sometimes, a lot of writing is nowhere near as deep or complicated as people try to make it.
Some works of literature are obviously deep. One I can think of is 'The Awakening' by Kate Chopin. Her novel makes a lot of vague comparisons, and has an underlying meaning in reference to the relation between women and society during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Another is titled 'Clash of Civilizations Over An Elevator in Piazza Vittorio', which touched on ethnic and racial tensions in Italy. These books not only have deep meanings, but they can be analyzed pretty deeply. My favorite part about the is that they both implicitly touch on big, controversial issues. (Because you know me; I just LOVE controversial issues :D)
However, even these have a limit to them. Meaning, YES, there is a way to over-analyze things.
And my justification for saying this isn't because I'm lazy and tired of trying to think of deeper meaning behind things. It's because I am a writer, and I know that when I write, things just...happen. It's not all the time that I put a hidden meaning in the word, or write things in ways to elude to some great big idea. When I write 'She scratched her back vigorously', you shouldn't necessary think 'Oh, she had a deprived childhood where her mother didn't believe that fingernails were sanitary and would always cut them very low, so now as an adult she was lashing out in a defiant way by scratching her back with her now-grown fingernails.' ...sometimes (and USUALLY), it just means that her back itched...a lot.
One of such works I can think of off the top of my head that this is often done with is Robert Frost's 'Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening'. I mean, yes, he uses different literally devices to create the mood for the poem... But a class shouldn't spend four days analyzing this work. There is no hidden murder plot in the poem. Have you ever just though he wrote it without really attempting to hide things in it...? Because that's what I think...
Another funny example for me are literary works written by Edgar Allen Poe. Most of his works definitely do have interesting plots that are worth exploring, but I honestly doubt that he intentionally wrote endless loopholes into his works that were meant to stump people for years.
Now, does this mean that I hate analyzing literature? NO! I enjoy analyzing literature, and encourage people to analyze my own works as well.
I think I mainly just dislike line-by-line analysis. In my opinion, if one is analying your work with this method, either the person doing the analyzing is approaching the work incorrectly, or it is not a well-written piece of work. (There can obviously be an exception for poetry.)
To me, the more effective way to analyze would be starting with large ideas, then connecting them to the story through examples from the text. It is much less boring, and more likely to invoke good and genuine conversation about what's going on in the text.
But at the end of the day, my biggest though when sitting in class is this: "Hell, if after I die, people are analysis my works the way we are doing now, I would be pretty damn satisfied."
Thanks for reading.
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