You know what I miss doing?
Literary analysis.
That’s right, I said it. The English minor in me has emerged full swing. I’m sitting here, watching Pride & Prejudice, and do you know what is going through my mind? Austen’s message on the status of women. Yes, P&P is a lovely story about finding true love while overcoming personal biases. Yada, yada, yada. However, when you really break the story down, Austen portrays the inequalities of 19th century English society in the terms of how women are affected by unfair inheritance laws, and the hypocrisy of social status. Think about just a few lines: “Even my piano stool belongs to Mr. Collins.” “We are perfectly able to keep a cook.” And these are just a few. Don’t get me started on the {please imagine this spoken with an hyperbolic and ironic British accent} Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
Yes I just went there–I high school English classed all of you.
But that’s just it, you know, I really enjoy picking literature apart and finding the symbols and message hidden amidst its pages. It’s like a scavenger hunt. It creates critical thinking skills. Not to mention that, as often as I complain about how it takes the fun out of reading, what it does in actuality is makes reading more enjoyable. When you know the author’s true purpose and read with that in mind, won’t the novel (poem, short story, etc) make more sense? I find it so.
And let’s be honest, the fact that this is a lost art is depressing. People do use their brains anymore! Technology, as much as I love it, I am convinced has created a generation of dumbed down Americans. Why read a classic novel over 140 pages when you can twitter up to 140 words? We are an ADD generation, bouncing around from one thing to the next. When will we take the time to breathe!! And how did I get to this conclusion based on literary analysis? Well honestly I’m not sure. But I will end with this. Stop, take a breath, read a book, and think about that book. Don’t be afraid or too lazy to analyze, you never know what you might teach yourself.
