A Bookwyrm

So many books and tv shows about werewolves worship this dominance culture, especially a male-centric dominance hierarchy, and sometimes it drives me nuts because it’s regarded as the default. That if humans transformed into beasts, of course most of the survivors would be men, and of course they’d be violent and territorial and murderous, and of course they’d be vaguely chauvinistic because ‘they can’t help it that’s just how werewolves are’.

Never forget how close he came.

Hey, people can be dumb AND have terrible high school English teachers. And blue curtains representing depression IS stupid, and shallow, and I will hate that kind of analysis until I die. There are unfathomable depths of bad teaching out there. Teach kids how to analyze the important stuff in stories, and ask questions like: “What’s this cult trying to do? What do we think of their methods? What are the moral implications of their actions? How does the story frame the main character’s emotional arc?” 

While you’re definitely right that people can be dumb and have terrible English teachers, I actually don’t think close reading is dumb? I think close reading is one of the wild joys of….being a reader?  Blue curtains always representing depression is silly. But in the right story it might be true. More than that, in the right essay it might be amazing?  Like, I absolutely agree that learning about rhetoric, which is more what you’re talking about, is critical. But close reading can be this joyful exploration of a story!  I remember when I was in high school I wrote an essay about Narcissus and Goldmund that basically argued “they’re gay! they’re in love! please respect my position, Mr. English Teacher,” and I spent most of the essay close-reading the scene where Narcissus rescues Goldmund from his prison cell, and the significance of Narcissus bringing in a candle that was almost burnt out, but still illuminating the dark cell, and how the descriptive words Hesse used for the darkness and the light of the candle were like other words he’d used earlier to describe bags of money, and then I connected this to an argument about how Narcissus not only illuminates truth and self-identity to Goldmund, he also metaphorically replenishes him (or something. this is an essay i wrote as a teenager :P)  why I remember this essay, above all the other essays I wrote in high school, is because I remember feeling absolutely GIDDY for having made those connections, for being able to craft an argument through symbolism, for feeling like the point I felt a little daring to be making could be backed up with evidence even though I thought I was probably going against the grain of Hesse’s intentions in the scene. it didn’t feel like something I was making up, it felt like something I’d discovered. it felt right.