aww. We don't need more people like him, we need to be more like him

Good, good, boi.

Great job she deserves more than just a gold medal. Someone needs to give her a medal for kicking life's butt.

Author: "He painted his front door blue". Teacher: "The door is blue to signify his descent into depression." Author: "The door is just friggin' blue. -.-"

What a guy, a lot of effort but it must've been worth it. I hate searching for meaning where there is none

I remember Paul McCartney doing an interview when he was asked about the symbolism of a particular word he used in one song. He told the interviewer that he used that word because it was the only one that rhymed.

In France, the teacher gives the text of a song to study. Among the students the singer's nephew (Yves SIMON). In the evening the boy asks his uncle to explain the song to him. Teacher's response to the student a few days later: You didn't understand the song.

For my BFF’s English class they were all asked to choose a poem and present their analysis to the class. They were all tired of the teacher always insisting her interpretation was correct. My BFF decided to make a point. She babysat Michael Ondotje’s kids. (The English Patient) She chose one of his poems and then sat down with him and got “straight from the horse’s mouth”, so to speak all that he was meaning, right the way through. She did her presentation and of course the teacher told her she was entirely wrong. It went back and forth until my friend told her about knowing him, and sitting down with him to find out. She still insisted that my friend was wrong. WTH?

Literature courses that taught symbolism, especially ones where the potential symbolism was not up for interpretation, dissuaded me from trying to publish anything for a long time. I never wanted my work treated like that and I am pretty certain a lot of other authors don't like it, either.

Reminds me of the time we were reading Beowulf in my world literature course, but I was also taking AP Latin. My literature teacher was not amused when I asked why we were looking for symbolism in an epic that was composed before our modern conceptualization of symbolism existed. It was a legitimate question into the function of the exercise :(

One of my favorite stories is about "The Road Not Taken". My English teachers all said it was about the importance of taking "the road less traveled by" and doing something different. Robert Frost said it was about overthinking things and assuming a decision had more importance than it really did. This is supported by the poem "Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black.

Reminds me of the time I interpreted my husband's art work — He had taken human hair (my hair) and placed it under glass in an oval gilded frame. I told people it was a statement on the victorian practice of memoriam. He later told me he just wanted to put some hair under glass because the shape was interesting to him. 😂

When we read The Scarlet Letter in high school the amount of symbolism my teacher said there was for that freaking letter A was insane!!!

I will insist to my dying day that Nathaniel Hawthorne did not intentionally put 23 instances of symbolism into one of the chapters of The Scarlet Letter, because he was not a complete hack. My English teacher, however, absolutely was a hack for making us try to find that many.

That is right.

Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' is the best example of this. People over- interpret it.

Best not to put symbolism where it isn't. For example, I cross my arms. It could mean I'm cold. Or wanting a hug. Or defensive, or wanting to hold my boobs up!

This reminds me of my senior year of high school. The AP Literature teacher and Honors English teacher had a long standing feud regarding whether or not the tree in Ethan Frome was meant to be a phallic symbol (and the sled crashing a representation of an extramarital affair). It was really bizarre how passionate they each were in their positions.

A Dutch author wrote a poem about a fisherman in the ocean. The poem was interpreted and theorized about ( he is writing about this, that, a nuclear explosion) until someone thought of asking this guy. The author said something like "I saw a little Japanese ink drawing of a fisherman ,with ocean and sky not very defined and wrote a poem about that. That's all." D'oh. https://www.gedichten.nl/nedermap/gedichten/gedicht/33351.html . Edit: He called it a haiku, which is what I first wrote , but it is not really a haiku.

I remember when we read Poe's "The Raven" in highschool. Most of them, including the teacher, thought it was about his wife's death. I pointed out the the bio accompanying the poem showed she died 2 years after it was written. I knew then that teacher use BS.

Ohhhh, if I could just drop this little tidbit on my old English teacher 😂

I have always thought most of this symbolism was made up by teachers, not the authors.

I watched a Sam Slade movie , he analyzed everything .

sometimes a cigar is just …

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A hero we need.

Allegory verses applicability.

Do you think Scott Cawthon had all of this s**t figured out from the get go? He was upset because someone figured out the whole story from the last game he was ever going to create, FNAF. When he realized how popular it was, of course he began to switch things up and say that no, not everything was figured out, so he could get more money and squeeze every penny out of the franchise that he could, instead of making something new. Rarely is anything actually planned.

Looked into this story and a good amount of the authors replied that the tutor is correct. Perfect example of how you can present information to make it appear to overwhelmingly favor the premise you set up, but in reality the conclusion is significantly more complicated. This student was a jerk.