[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 55 KB, 299x498, the_end_of_eternity_book_cover.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
486465 No.486465 [Reply] [Original]

Did any of you hate english class? I absolutely love reading books, but as soon as I had to analyze them in preperation for an exam or essay, it ruined the whole experience of reading.

>> No.486476

It's got nothing on recess.

>> No.486498

I remember way back in high school having to spend two whole weeks analyzing the ducks from Catcher in the Rye. I love Catcher, but I don't think that even Holden himself gave the ducks THAT much thought.

For me it honestly depended on the individual class. Some classes were basically a round table where anyone could say anything they wanted to, thought provoking or retarded, and just basically chat about the books. Those, I obviously liked. The ones I didn't liked treated the book du jour as something we had to grind to the center of to extract the deeper meaning. Teachers would hammer home, "See? THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE DOING HERE." It felt like being spoon fed liquid retarded with a sledgehammer, if I'm allowed to mix my metaphors.

I also hate the pacing of English classes in general. I want to read books as I read them, and absorb them. Like letting a delicious piece of chocolate melt on your tongue rather than wolfing down the whole bar in five minutes. I hated having As I Lay Dying be thrown at me and being expected to want to or even be able to read it within a week, when my five other college English professors were expecting me to do the same with their favorite author's opus.

>> No.486520

I just hated being told what to read. I can't really get into a book if I'm being forced to read it. So I never really read anything we were assigned until after high school.

>> No.486527

>>486520
Here I thought I was the only one.

I'd make a good show of trying, at least, but I'd never actually read a book all the way through until I wasn't assigned it. Even things like Heart of Darkness and 1984, which I enjoyed, I wouldn't read until I didn't have to read them.

>> No.486529

>>486465
I actually loved English but I hate(d) the way it butchers books. Reading a book 3 pages at a time is no way to justify a story.

>> No.486544

>It felt like being spoon fed liquid retarded with a sledgehammer

Jesus, pop just came out of my nose

>> No.486563

I think being taught that there is a correct way to analyze a book, or even that some analyses are better than others completely destroys the ability of a work to significant impact on the reader. Never mind that most English teachers are over zealous idiots who have no idea what the books they're teaching are about.

>> No.486566

This is so very true. I was forced to read 'Their Eyes Were Watching God', which (unlike 'Catcher in the Rye') I and my classmates hated; I have a deep-seated suspicion that the only reason we read it is that if anyone were to suggest that we STOP, they'd be racist AND sexist.

>> No.486602

>>486566
That's another thing I dislike about the standard methods of teaching English. In every single class there has to be a unit on racially sensitive literature, and on feminist literature. Sometimes more than one on the former. As one of the few white males in a major that is predominated by women, I feel pretty damn singled out.

For example, there was this one short story we were to read that's name escapes me. The basic premise was that there were three main characters, a man, his wife, and their maid. The man was a non-entity, as for the duration of the story he was away on business, except for the pertinent plot detail that he bonked the maid. So the wife finds out, and the maid's in hysterics, and the story invariably ends after a few inner monologues on the nature of womanhood with the wife leaving the husband with their maid to go live together in harmony harmony oh love.

This was bullshit for the reason that the maid, a woman of 25-ish, was treated as a child who had no idea what the fuck sex was, and was therefore innocent. The sex wasn't treated as rape, but was treated as consent through ignorance, and when the wife found out, the maid was considered by both characters and narrators to be completely innocent in the matter.

To which I cried, That's fucking stupid. It takes two people to fuck, and she's just as guilty as the husband. Just because she has a vagina that means she is allowed to cheat any more than the husband?

Aaaand I was instantly branded the villain of the classroom.

>> No.486606

I remember freshman year I had this teacher who would assign us books at the beginning of class, and then spend the next hour spoiling every single detail of every single chapter and then expect us to read it.

It was bullshit, but that teacher was still awesome.

>> No.486612

>>486602
Fucking Feminist Nationalist Socialists... amirite.

>> No.486626

>>486606
My teacher argued that a good book can't be spoiled... which is, of course, bullshit.

>> No.486628

>>486602
...

I don't even..how do you, what? Was everyone in your class mentally disabled?

>> No.486660
File: 202 KB, 622x473, AdornoHorkheimerHabermasbyJeremyJShapiro2.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
486660

>>486612
LONG LIVE THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL!

>> No.486936

>>486628
The class was 80% female, and the teacher was a self-admitted militant feminist.

Though, funny story, the teacher afterwards called me up when class ended and said, although she personally disagreed with me, she admired my courage for vilifying myself in front of the whole classroom.

So even though all the prissy feministas hated my guts for the rest of the semester, I got free reign to troll them mercilessly.

>> No.486954

>>486602

I have no problem with reading To Kill A Mockingbird as homework, but one year of the racially sensitive lit is enough. Not nearly enough emphasis is put on the classics, or for that matter, more analytical conflicts.

>> No.486974

>>486602
That sounds like a really stupid story, so yeah you might have been right about that one. Your complaint about being "singled out," though, is why teaching explicitly about race issues and feminist issues is important. See, the way you were feeling there, you know, aware of being put into a category and scrutinized on the basis of that category, is how non-white/non-male people feel *most* of the time. As white males, we don't have to think about that stuff, and it's easy for us to say things like "why can't we all just look at each other as individuals" because our culture is the default. People who differ from the default are always defined against it, and it sucks, and it's tough to shake. So the oppressive kind of atmosphere you felt in class when suddenly the primary area of concern wasn't your perspective, or the perspectives of people just like you, is a pretty good approximation of the way other people feel most of the time. It's good to be aware of that.

>> No.486990

>>486974
>how non-white/non-male people feel *most* of the time
Oh god it's painful to hear that kind of shit again. Like, physically painful.

Do you really think your average black man walks around constantly thinking, "Oh, I better not eat any watermelon today or someone might place me in a racial stereotype."

No one cares anymore. It's not the goddamn 1960's, if we're not in the goddamn south, we're not going to be surrounded by goddamn racism.

Now, see, if we were reading GAY literature I'd understand, because those poor bastards are maligned every second of every day, but blacks? Shit, dog, the President is black. My girlfriend is black. Racism against blacks, while still existing, just really isn't the problem it used to be.

TL;DR I don't like being held personally accountable for what a bunch of assholes quite a ways before I was born said about races or genders not their own.

>> No.487003

>>486990
Bro, they still do. I know you think it's all over. Imagine being an educated black man and watching all those idiot wiggers hang around throwing around "nigga this my nigga that" on the street corner where your office building is. You're going to cringe inside every single time and consciously make an effort to distance yourself from that.

>> No.487032

>>487003
Yes, because they sound like tools, not just because you don't want to be a stereotype.

There are bigger things at play here than "Oh I don't want to be seen as a common stereotypical black man/mexican/woman." I mean, sure, that's A factor, but the bigger thing is that people want respect. I, a white man, don't go around wearing three popped collar shirts at once with a trucker cap on top of my white-fro and don't preface every sentence with the word "bro" because I want respect. That's what it boils down to, respect. You want people to respect you as an individual, not think of you as someone they can shelve into a category.

Race does play a part in that admittedly, but it's not the overarching idea here, which is, in fact, the tribalism idea of "us and them". You are, obviously, someone you respect, and thus you respect people like you or people who, though different, through their own confidence and eloquence, demand respect all the same. People who are loud, obnoxious, and act crass, vulgar and uneducated do not strive for respect, and thus are given none. Everyone who aims to be upwardly mobile in a capitalist culture deals in the currency of respect, and therefore to be crass is to be the antithesis of the system, to be beyond contempt.

It's class-based. Not race-based. Race is an oversimplification and anyone with an ounce of rational thought would treat it as such.

>> No.487035

>>487032
Bro, take a chill pill. Bro.
Bro.

>> No.487041
File: 8 KB, 191x214, wat_dawg.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
487041

>>486465
oh god, let me tell you....

I've got a fairly nice prof who seemed okay when I did a creative writing class with him, but immeditately after he went full nutbar. Analyzed every single fucking piece on quasi-religious overtones to promote his own personal philosophy, and on top of that if you contradicted him you got an auto-zero. He perscribed shit books, and I really just grew to hate reading in general. Even the good writing was over-analyzed by motherfucking miles.

you don't even get any real fucking benefits for majoring in english, Jesus Christ.