As you read and learn you begin to make connections with everyday life and the stories that you take in. Even in lectures and class, making connections with lessons with daily activities is bound to happen. But maybe, in creative writing classes this happens more.
Today, in my survey course on fiction writing my professor went on a rant about how high school English classes over analyze stories for symbols. He claimed that no writer he knows sets out to write a symbol into their novel, and that as a writer this is something we should never do. His rant sent me back to a high school, and a story that my friend told me about her English teacher.
While reading The Adventures of Huck Finn, her teacher said, "They were on a wooden raft. You know what else is made of wood?" After no response, he said, "The cross!" It took everything in my friend not to reply, "The raft was made of wood because rafts are made of wood, not because of Jesus."
Ignoring the religious aspects of this argument, you can see my professor's claim on symbolism coming into light. This rant was something tangible and attainable to me because I experienced this exact over analyzing in my own high school. This memory only seemed more relevant to me when later in the class my professor began to explain how in structuring a novel or short story there can be a disconnect of what the main character knows, versus what the reader knows and he used Huck Finn as his example.
No comments:
Post a Comment