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/lit/ - Literature

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1416108 No.1416108 [Reply] [Original]

Your thoughts?

>> No.1416119

my father is a children's book author. people try to pull bullshit symbolism out of his stories all the time. he says it's quite entertaining

>> No.1416118

In teacher training colleges in the UK (for secondary school) they even discourage you from reading novels as a class.

This means that some poor deprived dumb-fucks will lose out on having read even one book in their miserable lives.

>> No.1416126

>>1416119

Go on, who?

>> No.1416131

OP, that comic pretty accurately describes middle school/high school English class

>> No.1416136

Symbolism is bullshit imposed on the text after the fact almost 90% of the time, I'd say. The other 10% of the time it's a hamfisted shortcut to meaning when character development and interaction and so on should be the main source of the understanding you get from a text.

Example, yesterday I read an analysis of Kafka that said "The removal of the furniture is a symbol of giving up hope on Gregor’s ability to become human again. The furniture is Gregors link to his human past." Nope. The fact that his family removes the furniture shows their loss of hope that he'll go back to normal, the furniture is just furniture.

When you look at characters and motivations rather than static symbolism, you have a dynamic way to create changing emotion and atmosphere in a text. Symbols are like cues. If you feel the need to incorporate symbols, you don't trust your reader enough, you're being too obvious.

Nabokov said that style and structure are the essence of a book, great ideas are hogwash. I don't agree 100% but I do feel that too much emphasis is placed on these "ideas" in literature courses, while craft is also a very, very important part of why we write and why we enjoy fiction.

>> No.1416141

That is how it works, but I generally just played along. I pulled a Marxist-Feminist analyses of Pride and Prejudice out of my ass, and argued Frankenstein as a gnostic-tinged metaphor for the Genesis story, with the lack of an even character directly related to the relationship of Mary to her mother, and the monster-Frankenstein relationship drawn from her relationship to her father.

>> No.1416145

>>1416141
These are funny, because what ultimately remains is the text. All these ideas and papers "about the text" fall to the wayside.

>> No.1416156

>>1416141

take out the marxist femenist portion and its good thats just you trying to show off and everyone knows it

>> No.1416173

Literary theory = ivory tower wanking.

Seems particularly shitty to try to make fourteen-year-olds engage in 'my first symbolism' analyses.

>> No.1416175

>>1416141
>argued Frankenstein as a gnostic-tinged metaphor for the Genesis story,

>"I could have been your Adam"

I don't think Mary Shelley had even heard of Genesis.

>> No.1416183

>>1416175

Which album? I think her diaries mention listening to them in passing.

>> No.1416186

Everything is valid as long as you can make yourself clear.

Just because it's complex or hidden doesn't make it less true, just because the author himself didn't have that intention doesn't make it less valid. You have a personal interpretation of the story, with your own ideas about what happened, about why those things are there. If you explain your reasons to think so and I buy, than it's fine. Saying an interpretation is hamfisted into the story is just as personal as the actual reading of the story. Some things break the suspension of disbelief for me and not for you, some others do the opposite and just like that, some interpretations will make a lot of sense for the one who had the idea and not so much for others. Who are we to judge that?

Symbolism is a device just as much as everything else. Some stories are meant to be simple, some stories are focused on its own structure, others use symbolism. There is no right and wrong, just what we buy or not, what we make of it or not.

>> No.1416187

>>1416136
So what you're saying is that the removal of the furniture shows the loss of hope that he'll ever become human again? Couldn't you go a bit further and say it's a symbol of the loss of hope?

>> No.1416196

>>1416136
That's interesting. What about archetypes? I kind of think of them as a dynamic form of symbolism.

>> No.1416212

>>1416108
Part of me agrees. We're taught to analyse a few books very closely, whether or not the meaning is intended. Feels a bit pointless.

However, it can help teach people to look beneath the obvious. The hope is that it will make people less superficial. Reading many books without analysing them is fun, but there's not much to be gained from it.

>> No.1416214

>Example, yesterday I read an analysis of Kafka that said "The removal of the furniture is a symbol of giving up hope on Gregor’s ability to become human again. The furniture is Gregors link to his human past." Nope. The fact that his family removes the furniture shows their loss of hope that he'll go back to normal, the furniture is just furniture.

I don't see your point (honestly). The furniture IS a link to his human past, or else it would not be a symbol for his loss of hope. I mean you cannot replace the furniture with anything else without changing its meaning to the story.

>> No.1416235

I don't see why anyone would put forward an idea that author had no intention of expressing. I am not against symbolism, but a book is more than just a collection of literary devices.

>> No.1416244

I tend to think that authors unintentionally put symbolism into their writing, simply because they subconsciously conform their characters to existing archetypes and will tend to use images that have subconscious meaning.

>> No.1416246

>>1416187
>>1416214
What I'm saying is that the furniture is just furniture, as is it doesn't symbolize anything. What shows that the family has given up hope on him are their own actions in removing the furniture, among other things they do and the way they interact with him. It's silly to focus on furniture when the character dynamics are so much more interesting and offer more room for discussion.

Basically, symbols are static and definite. When a teacher presents one in class, it halts discussion. Human motivation can be discussed. Why are they removing the furniture? Do they think he's dirty? Do they think he no longer deserves the furniture? Will they use it for something else? I feel like this is a better approach to high school english classes, especially since through this line of discussion they'll also learn how to ask these questions in their own writing and establish stronger character motivations, if that's what they want to do.

And yes, the story wouldn't be the same if the furniture was replaced with something else. What does an average person have in their room? Furniture. So that's what Gregor has in his room. It's silly to say Kafka wrote it consciously as a symbol.

>>1416196
Hmm, archetypes are interesting. Used the wrong way, people cry stereotype or cliche, but used the right way they create stories that we find naturally compelling for some reason. Archetypes are more of a skeleton for a story, rather than a single element of it, as a symbol may be. I feel like they're part of the structure, whereas symbols are imposed or superfluous. I can't really say too much as I haven't read up on it. Jung is on my to-read list, I swear!

>> No.1416251

Repeat after me:

Intent doesn't matter the author doesn't matter intent doesn't matter the author doesn't matter intent doesn't matter the author doesn't matter
intent doesn't matter the author doesn't matter

>> No.1416253

>>1416235

bullshit
>>implying there aren't things in texts (novels, billboards, 4chan posts) which demonstrate the underlying structures of the author's psyche and society which the author himself wasn't exactly aware of
>>p.s freud, welcome to the 20th century

>> No.1416257

>>1416246
It was interesting yesterday watching the Father Ted documentary when they talked about how Dougal is a cliché or archetype. But because they put him centre stage as it were, he had to develop into an actual character.

>> No.1416258

>read comic
>symbology

symbolism?

>> No.1416270

i think the comic too strongly considers student victimhood, but it's a comic, it has to exaggerate for the laffs

while high school metaphor/symbol reading definitely spiraled quickly into meaninglessness, the overall goal of the process was to encourage critical thinking, searching for patterns/recurring themes and constructing an argument. i think this is frankly the best that can be done for high schoolers.

you can't realistically expect many adolescents to care about books, let alone comprehend the common human events in novels with as much gravity as domestic violence, fraud, suicide, instances of racism, etc. and then you want to move from there to WORKING with this ideas and analyzing them? there's no empathetic basis for that yet for students, even well into college. imo the current system is adequate.

i feel lucky, i think my HS was an exception, we actually spent six or so weeks on working with different lenses with which people criticize texts outside of close reading... historical, autobiographical, psychological, sociological, etc.

>> No.1416282

Well I mean sure, if you get your kicks out of playing psychologist with every author you read, go ahead. But speaking of Freud and the unconscious- who is to say that you aren't simply reading yourself into the text? Kimbote in Pale Fire is a prime example of that kind of reader.

>> No.1416280
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1416280

>>1416186


>Everything is valid as long as you can make yourself clear.

fucking postmodernism. get off my internets.

>> No.1416285

>>1416280
GTFO liberal scum

Postmodernism up in this bitch, deconstructing your most dearly held values

>> No.1416287

>>1416282
So is Lacan.

>> No.1416290

>>1416246
>When a teacher presents one in class, it halts discussion.
But you can discuss the meaning of a symbol. Just because a teacher suggests one meaning doesn't mean the class can't suggest it's own.

>> No.1416302

>>1416246
Alright, the actual actions of Gregor's family might be more important than the relevance of his furniture to his past but there is SOME reason it's mentioned and described in detail in the story. Otherwise why would Kafka even bother dedicating part of the story to telling the reader what Gregor's room was like?

I think you're discrediting the use of symbolism too much in favor of character interaction when really literature analysis ought to be a blend of both.

>> No.1416305

>>1416290
whenever I present one, only the teacher comments

i fucking hate english class.

>> No.1416307

>>1416305
It's not the teacher's fault your classmates were retards.

>> No.1416313

>>1416108
>implying the great gatsby doesn't have symbolism
>implying the symbols obfuscate the themes rather than adding more to the themes
>implying the student doesn't just want to look it all up on sparknotes be cause he has other shit to do.

Why do people complain about this? They seem to think authors don't think about what they write and just write random stuff with symbolism imposed afterword.

>> No.1416317

>>1416285

Liberal refers to my economic policy, right?

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is"
Ah, Clinton. pomo at its finest

>> No.1416315

>>1416246
I disagree with that static idea of symbolism. When you take different interpretations of the objects around you (not just physical objects, but everything that is not a subject) and put them together you have a complex understanding of the relationship between ourselves and the objects. This relationship is everything but static and symbols are just the link between object and subject.

So what is furniture? It could be made of wood, metal, stone, plastic, could be big and frightening, could be cozy and give that "home feeling", could mean personal objects and therefore personality, it could say a lot about a character's interests and point of view, it could be linked to a family, it could be a gift from someone and a link to that person, it could store secrets and lies, it could have mirrors and so on. Lot's of stuff can be said about furniture and what will determine what is likely true or false is the context.

The context being Metamorphosis, what can we read about the furniture? It's certainly not there to criticize interior designers or something like that. You pick up all the possible ideas surrounding furniture and see which ones match and, in the context, what does that imply? So if the furniture, as objects related to civilization, home, organization,(all human) is removed from the room, it could be said that any hope of civilization was removed as well.

>> No.1416328

>>1416313
>just write random stuff

this is actually what faulkner did with as i lay dying, as far as i'm aware

i mean, obviously the ideas came from somewhere and the narrative arc was something of a social commentary/observation, but it all pretty much dumped from his head onto the page

this isn't intended as a criticism of faulkner, i love him

>> No.1416334

>>1416313
*cough* Eva *cough*

Or, in more detail: *cough* including christian crosses and nomeculture then admitting that this was only to make it look DEEP to the japanese fanbase who are mostly non-christian. *cough*

>> No.1416339

>>1416307
Thats what I hoped to coney.

All students in the grade feel english is a joke, and when you can get away from reading the text and use sparknotes instead, they're right. However, class sucks so hard that I can walk in without having read the assignment, and still lead the discussion. Theres no hope amongst my peers, all I do now is earn the respect of my teacher.

Sorry for going full holden, but my grievance is still relevant to the topic, which asked for our view of english class.

>> No.1416342

>>1416285
Wait, what? Doesn't liberalism mean they are more accepting of new ideas? Shouldn't that read "GTFO conservative scum?"

>> No.1416345

>>1416290
That's pretty idealistic. The teacher is an authority figure, if they say one interpretation is more right than others, the average public school kid will probably just take it, even if other options are brought up. If a teacher wants to create discussion, it's better to ask questions than to make statements.

>>1416302
I assume it's for the same reason JRR Tolkien describes so many trees. Or because it reveals character. Just because something is noted doesn't mean it's a symbol.

Symbols are a legitimate part of writing, of course, but I feel like they're shorthand for things that could be better revealed through character. So yeah, I do focus on characterization more, because I think it's the more interesting but also more difficult part of writing.

Of course, people will think differently and find symbols to be very interesting. I really don't, at all, and I think symbolic readings aren't the way to get the most out of a book.

>> No.1416374

>>1416315
This is a good point, but when i think about the furniture in a room, the choice of the family to remove it (for what? to protect the furniture? to benefit Gregor?) is just as important as how it got into the room in the first place. I always wondered why Gregor had that particular picture of the girl in the muff. It's revealing of his character for the author to show that he picked that. I feel like setting (as not only the time and place but how the objects around the character are related to the character) is something you should put effort into describing if you want to develop your characters.

>> No.1416378

>>1416334
Its a misguided impression to dismiss all symbolism in evangelion as meaningless.

True, the use of religion will undoubtedly tempt people to delve into more of the mythology, something the creators were irresponsible with especially when it became a hit overseas.
However, that is not to say that they were useless, it was meant to invoke the emotion of mystery from a japanese audience.

NGE has some definite use of symbols and motifs that enforces its themes, and they are NOT the religious icons, but a whole set crafted by the director that does not borrow from other ideas.

>> No.1416381

>>1416339
I remember, back when I was in GCSE (age 15) english class we had to analyse poems. One of the poems, "Vultures", was a comparison between vultures and nazis. I was the only person in the class to get the fact that the poem was comparing nazis to vultures.

To clarify, half of the poem was talking about vultures, then it said something along the lines of "like the vultures, this nazi..."

How can you not get that?

>> No.1416385

>>1416381

State school? Inbred chavs perhaps?

>> No.1416392

>>1416378
Oh yes, I know Eva has symbolism, but all of the christian and jewish stuff was just put in to confuse the japanese. A perfect example of symbolism tacked on afterwards.

>> No.1416398

>>1416315
Have you read Lakoff's Metaphors we live by?

>> No.1416399

>>1416385
It was a top class. I knew most of the people in it and they were all intelligent. Some of them just switched off in class, but I think they were just really really bad at symbolism.

>> No.1416408

>>1416381
"Discussion groups" are usually 2 people stating the obvious and 15 people not wanting to look either pretentious or like they're are stating something everyone already knows.

It's not that you were the only one who caught it. It's that you were the only one fool enough to open your mouth and utter some idiocy.

>> No.1416413

>>1416392
They were never intended to be symbols, but more along the lines of style.
The audience was only tempted to find meaning because of their familiarity with the icon, not the actual use if it in the series.

Like I said, calling it irresponsible symbolism is misguided, and should be recognized as irresponsible use of style.

>> No.1416416

>>1416399
They were perhaps not litfags?
Intelligence != lit
Scifag here, only took Higher English because required/for the easy A, couldn't have shown less interest.

>> No.1416418

>>1416385
>went to state school
>GCSE , A-level, (nearly) all As
>Didn't cost the same as a small house
U mad?

>> No.1416428

>>1416408
And this is why discussion groups are a waste of time.

>> No.1416433

>>1416428
Large discussion groups.

>> No.1416438

>>1416408
>15 people not wanting to look either pretentious or like they're are stating something everyone already knows.

That mentality probably stems from their experience in lower education. Both their disinterest and sense of futility were engraved from the low-level discussion they had to suffer through.

A very concerning complex that should be addressed if it is indeed what happens.

>> No.1416449

>>1416433
Granted. But even in a small group you don't have much chance of the people you're stuck with having anything interesting to say.

>> No.1416453

>>1416438
>addressing teenage awkwardness
Good luck with that one, brah.
hahaha_oh_wow.tar.gz

>> No.1416456

Symbolism = = brain masturbation.
We are long ahead of dark ages or communism, when church or government strictly controlled and censored all literature. If you have something to say about the situation in the world just fuckin do it, otherwise fuck you and your symbolism.

>> No.1416458

>>1416438
It always happens. Every discussion group class I ever had I rarely said anything. Most of all, I did not want to be like the parroting jokes that actually did raise their hands when the professor asked some flaccid conversation-starter like, "what kind of man is Lear?"

>> No.1416457
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1416457

>>1416290

Unfortunately my English 12 teacher thought the complete opposite of you. His meanings were correct...always correct.

>> No.1416462

>>1416428
I don't know. They helped me, but I suppose I was only one person in a group of close to 30.

>> No.1416471

>>1416457
He really shouldn't be an english teacher.

>> No.1416475

>>1416449
I would disagree. We all have different perspectives, and different backgrounds. So we bring different ideas and thoughts to the table.

>> No.1416477

>>1416457
You'd be surprised how many of these types just want to be debated.
Parroting shit gets boring for them, too.

>> No.1416480

>>1416475
That's another problem of discussion groups. Much of what is said is only about the life of the speaker, and relates only faintly to the text.

Waste. Of. Time.

If I wanted to pay money to hear someone talk about their life, I'd rent a friend.

>> No.1416488

>>1416480
Wow. Superficial reading to the max.

>> No.1416498

>>1416456
Beyond artistic appeal, symbolism does have utility in that it can translate concepts or ideas into terms different terms, such as the use of personification.
The problem with the use of symbolism is the same dilemma with word choice in poetry, in that people could easily interpret the piece differently based on their personal connotations with the text.

A sort of hit-or-miss thing. Except with symbolism, anything that is not a hit should be disregarded.

>> No.1416505

>>1416480
Waste of time? What is not a waste of time? Why do you read if not to see things you could never think of by yourself, if not to see what others have to say about our world? Other interpretations of those stories are just as subjective as interpretations of our world made by those who write and create from it. If you think people discussing these ideas cannot have interesting and valid point of views, then you should just skip reading, for I guarantee that for every good writer you'll find a thousand others whose ideas simply suck.

>> No.1416511

>>1416453
Its not so much teenage awkwardness as the environment that promotes it that is the issue.
It is an unavoidable circumstance what with the nature of the students, but still a problem that can be remedied.

>> No.1416519

>>1416505
Perhaps you didn't read the part when I said their comments only faintly relate to the text.

>> No.1416530

>>1416519
That's the problem. To avoid that you need to ask them to stay on topic or ask what that has to do with the book. Unfortunately, that means drawing attention to yourself.

>> No.1416532

>>1416519
Context from the author is very relevant to the text and adds another dimensional reading. Why do you think people seek historical context as well?

It isn't wrong that you dislike biographical exploration, but a shortsighted approach to any text.
A true literate will walk around the text and view it in different angles.

>> No.1416536
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1416536

I very much agree. I wish teachers would stop trying to incept core values and morals into us and just teach us about freakin' literature already.

did you see what i did there? did you see the part where i said incept? like from the movie inception? that was good huh

>> No.1416543 [DELETED] 

I don't try to find out what a text "really means" anymore. I can't tell you what a text "really means" as much as I can tell you what a china bowl or an apple "really means." I can tell you what you can reasonably put in a bowl, I can tell you that you can eat the apple, mash the apple and ferment it into cider.

>> No.1416545

>>1416136 The furniture is just furniture.

I disagree because the furniture means something to the family, and to Gregor -- I remember him initially freaking out and then feeling dejected when they remove his stuff.

That's the very definition of symbolism. If I remember Gregor's reaction correctly, the Gregor's motivation for that reaction is the furniture's significance, it's symbolic value.

That's very different from saying something like "The furniture represents the capitalist structure underlying Zionism" or something wacky like that.

>> No.1416549

>>1416519
Maybe because they have texts of their own. Ideas to defend, concepts to present.

If we are talking about quality (of literary work or its interpretations) then we are up to a long debate on why this interpretation is bad, why this book is good and that one not so much, why that vision is awesome and the other one is just delusional... But interpreting a story, the action itself cannot be taken as something essentially bad. This is where the person comes in, where the subject is just as important as the object, where ideas collide and we move on to new and revealing perceptions of our world as well as literature.

As soon as the author finishes his work and readers come to see, it's not his property anymore. The sperm was ejaculated, now bring the eggs and let's make some babies. I can assure some of them will be deformed, ugly or retarded, but we all know it's not the father's fault because we know there are some cool looking babies out there too. Do you see my point? As a mother, you, the reader, will love your baby more than any other, but that doesn't mean you won't find your child a nice match to result in beautiful grandchildren.

>> No.1416555

>>1416536 did you see what i did there?

Use "incept" as a synonym for "instill" or "engender" -- which it isn't?

>> No.1416560

>>1416505
Sorry but there's a bit of a difference between an author that can eloquently express an existential crisis or anything else in a way that gets the reader to identify or think "I never thought of it that way before" and your average dipshit that goes "This part made me sad because it made me think of the time I broke up with my boyfriend and went three days without being with him before we got back together."

Different interpretations is one thing; using a work as an excuse to talk about yourself is entirely different.

>> No.1416561

>>1416549
what a beautiful yet disturbing analogy, bravo.

I liked the part where you used the scenario father as a symbol for the sexist culture in modern society but preserved irresponsibility on both sides.

>> No.1416572

>>1416560
Wait, what? Why would someone say that? That's just stupid. There is absolutely no way the author was trying to include that meaning in the text.

I suppose you could say that the author was trying to remind people of loss.

>> No.1416575

I have nothing against people trying to find symbolism when they read, but high school English just rips apart the text trying to attach symbolism to absolutely everything no matter how contrived.

>> No.1416601

Having read comics by this dude before, and seeing the way science majors react to english majors, I don't care.

All these people do, day in and out is troll humanities majors. They say we're worthless, which isn't true, and they say you cannot(it's impossible) to find a job within humanities. Well thats a load of bullshit, isn't it? I mean if you think about this objectively, any college education(from a real college) has value, and the ability to get a job is directly tired to how in demand knowledge you have learned. Science Majors and Humanities majors both rarely walk out of a masters/doctoral program and into a 6 million dollars a year career. It really is something you need to work towards, isn't that fucking crazy!? So I'm in college to become a history professor. It's a long, ridiculous upward climb up a hill made of broken glass, and it seems at times that some people have better equipment than me, but that's fiiiine. I don't caaaaare. I have accepted that it's going to be hard, and I have accepted that it's going to be viciously difficult and the like to find a job teaching, but I have that drive. That's what bothers me about science and math majors, they just outright assume that because they're reading less written words and doing more work with symbols that they're going to walk into a job that makes them part of the top 1%. Okay then buddy. Wait, you didn't go into Harvard? lol

>> No.1416639

It depends on the author and the book. Some works of fiction are steeped in symbolism. A very English class example would be The Yellow Wall Paper. The whole story is suppose to represent the repression of women, and even the littler details are meant to support that, and we know this because the author commented on it after writing it. On the other had, a zen haiku is meant to leave with that "...damn" feeling.

The problem is authors like to keep their lips shut on these matters, so literary scholars are left to wank it out in papers and academic journals, which eventually leaks down to pupils and school teachers.

>> No.1416760

>>1416560

You realise though that the former is, in a way, basically just a dry intellectualisation/generalisation of the latter right? The 'this made me sad because it made me think about this which happened to me' is just one of the valid ways in which something might affect us, and shouldn't be completely ignored and removed from discourse in favour of the former 'this made me think about this in a new way/elucidated this about this', because the two are often very closely tied, i.e. half the time an artwork makes us think about things in a new way or whatever precisely BECAUSE in the instant of the aesthetic impression made upon us, links are forged to very specific instances in our own life. I mean what else do we have to go on if not our own experience?

>> No.1416877

>>1416760
>I mean what else do we have to go on if not our own experience?

The experiences of other people that might have a better understanding of things we're curious about. Such as the whole reason why memoirs exist and why an interest remains in them. Certainly none of us could come close to understanding what it was like to be in the American Civil War (just to use an example) even if we visited all of the historical sites and read all the books pertaining to the subject from a historian's standpoint. But the diaries of, say, a Confederate soldier can communicate something unobtainable otherwise to the reader because they experienced it directly and had the chance to record it.

The same goes for a lot of literature and the themes/events/characters that are analyzed by those completely unrelated, because a lot of the time the author will draw from personal experience. One example off the top of my head is when Myshkin is describing being witness to an execution in France in Dostoevsky's "The Idiot". The depiction of the condemned man's last moments went far beyond what I'd expect from anyone just "trying to imagine" what an experience would be like, and for good reason since the author himself knew exactly what it was like.

In any case, no I wouldn't say it ought to be discredited entirely but it's much more difficult to take such a statement seriously when it remains on such a basic level. "This makes me sad" is far more generalized than the scene in Kafka's "Metamorphosis" when, being drawn out of his room by his sister's violin-playing, he's met by her utter horror and revulsion at his presence even though his transformation had been a long-established fact.

>> No.1416972

I have nothing insightful to add to this discussion other than expressing how delightful I've found reading through it all.

As an aside - and partly because my diary is getting bored of my voice harping on - I'd like to add how fucking stressed I'm making myself, fretting over an essay I have to write for next week. I have a vague idea of what I'd like to do with it, but at the moment I can't help but feel like its a lost cause already; a mere incoherent mess of intellectualised masturbation without a happy ending in sight.
Woe.

>> No.1416982

Sometimes people over-analyze books.
Hell, what do I mean "sometimes"? They always do.

That aside though, most English classes I've been in are less about the book and more about what the book is supposed to represent.
Whether you can sum that up in a paragraph or not is irrelevant.