Look man, y’all know I lap up those “english teachers make up symbolism” memes like water in the sahara, and I’m sure my ELA teacher mutuals probably get tired of it, but here’s the thing: I don’t enjoy them for the same reason most people do. I don’t reblog them and go “haha so true” bc I think ELA is stupid and the teachers are lying to you. On the contrary, I thing they are teaching the most honest lesson there is, in the best way possible. They’re teaching you to understand yourself, by looking beyond the words on a page.
They’re teaching you subjective interpretation, using their own personal interpretations as a model. Sure, the sad blue curtains may seem ridiculous and trite, but it’s never been about disseminating objective fact about the author’s intent. It’s about giving an easy example, a solid concrete foundation, for the kinds of interpretations a reader can make.
And I know (TRUST ME, I know) that some teachers can hold a little too steadfastly to their personal interpretations of things that are meaningless to you, but you’ve got to think of it from their perspective. They’ve probably read these books a million times (hurray for unflinchingly strict curriculums). The last 500,000 times they’ve read it, the color of the curtains or the stillness of the lake have jumped out at them as being oddly specific things to mention, and then they applied their personal life experience to the text to interpret what those odd details mean, what they add to the story. At this point, those interpretations jump out at them the moment they read the words, and so when they teach it the million-and-first time, to them reading “blue curtains” as “a veil of sadness obscuring the outside world’s true visage” seems as obvious and unerringly true as… well, as reading the words “blue curtains”.
But the goal is always the same. It’s not to make shit up and waste your time. It’s not to force you to interpret the book the way the teacher does. It’s not to exclude and alienate anyone with different life stories and prior knowledge from the teacher’s. It’s to give you examples of how a good, passionate reader connects to a story instead of simply sounding out the words, so that one day you can connect to texts in your life and find personal meaning and emotional fulfillment in them. It’s so that eventually you will be able to understand yourself a little better by analyzing how and why you insert yourself into stories using details that might be meaningless to anyone else.
The reason I love those dopey “english teachers make up symbolism” memes isn’t bc I hate ELA teachers, or bc I think ELA is a waste of time. I love them because of the inherent truth of them — sure, the author may not have intended those three words as symbolism, but you are not the author. The author simply wrote a story; you have the much more profound task of inserting yourself into a story that has already been written. And your teacher is trying to help you do that.
The curtains are sad bc your teacher says so, as somebody reading the story. But they aren’t the only reader — you’re one too.
