Taking a super short break from working on my Lit and Film paper on "the theme/conflict between the 'significant' and 'insignificant' person in literature in film" to rant really quickly about how much it annoys me when lit professors make you try to find "meaning" in everything. Everything is a symbol; everything means something. The monkey is a symbol! The origin of his name "means" something! He calls her "Anna Karenina" - that "means" something! What does the goose "mean"? What do the cossacks "mean"? What does the department store in Modern Times "mean"? God. I mean, I get the importance of looking for the deeper subtext or being aware that a deeper subtext exists, but really. Everything does mean something in context, so why do we have to spend an hour and a half trying to figure out what the hell Gogol was thinking during the three years he took to write his obnoxious story "The Overcoat" (which, if for no other reason, is obnoxious just because of its lack of paragraphs)?!?! How are we ever supposed to understand what he wanted us to get out of this story that he wrote over 160 years ago?? I can appreciate analyzing literature, I really can. Sometimes I even enjoy looking at themes and archetypes and motifs and style - crazy, I know. But sometimes, especially where symbolism is concerned, I get incredibly frustrated with this whole looking for something that may not be there deal. Also when reading literary criticism. I can't believe people make a living by foisting their convoluted theories onto others. But I digress. My point is, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar - sometimes a starfish is just a starfish - and sometimes a giant monkey picked up off a raft during a typhoon is just a damn lucky monkey.
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Now playing: Chris Ayer - A Starfish In The Front Yard
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