About the Class

English 204 has been a great experience. I found myself developing as a writer, and most importantly, as a thinker.

Surprisingly enough, the poetic analysis paper was the best part of the class. It gave me an appreciation for poetry which I was lacking all this time. I also appreciate the fact that we did not dwell on nit-picky details and still managed to do some in-depth analysis of the texts we read. In high school, I was accustomed to getting carried away with every little symbol, trying to find meaning in every little thing. An example of a text that has been ruthlessly dissected is The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. Reading this book in an AP English class in high school made me realize just how ridiculous it was to take a book and spend hours talking about one tiny little detail which Joyce may have just randomly stuck in there. So I asked my teacher if Joyce really intended us to pick up on all these things and if they were indeed as meaningful as we had been trained to interpret them as. And she said, "No, Joyce would probably make fun of us!" Indeed, later I found the quote by Joyce himself: "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."

I don't care much for Joyce. His book was is not the most interesting but his prose is often brilliant and he left his mark in the world of classic literature and keeps us "busy for centuries arguing over what [he] meant." This is what writing tends to do: immortalize the writer and baffle/confuse the reader. This is very good. All books should seek to confuse their readers because confusion will provoke readers to discover something about themselves and the world. As we saw in the class, that discovery can also be that the book itself sucks or that the book is excellent.

Perhaps the greatest thing about a college English class is that the professor does not direct students to pick up certain literary techniques. Whatever we pick up on is what we ourselves have discovered. There is no forced interpretation and the scope of interpretation itself is very broad and liberal.

Just taking a glance at my previous blog entries, I can see a tremendous change in my writing. The best part about being an English major is that I will continue to see my writing develop and this class has only made me a little more confident for the English courses I will take in the future. Thanks Professor Ramachandran!