So,
I had to laugh last night as I was writing about Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven. I had to write up some kind of analysis of one of the works that I had read in the past couple of weeks and I chose this one. I chose it because it's one of the most famous poems in history and when I read it in high school and then read it again last week, I just really didn't get it.
Now, let me be upfront and say that poetry is not my thing. Let me also say that I read so much in a day now that my mind starts to just fog up toward the end of the day. So do my eyes. The words get physically blurry toward the end of the day. I'm going to go in to have my eyes checked. I told my dad that I was going in because after reading for 8 hours, things get blurry. His diagnosis (he's an English major and not a doctor) is that eyes weren't meant to read for 8 hours straight. He may be onto something. My caveman ancestors probably didn't run into this problem. Then again, my cavemen ancestors weren't trying to jam in a novel and several short stories into two days of reading. My caveman ancestors were probably smarter than to get themselves into this situation and probably went to college right out of high school when the demands of life were much less.
Speaking of high school and getting back to the point, my point of view is many times at odds with many of my classmates. I was reading Raven analyses online last night to try and get an idea of what I should write and I just kept shaking my head. I couldn't disagree with the physical set up (all that ABABBBB stuff) but I didn't agree with all the symbolism.
"How's it going?" Tia asked as I headed to the kitchen for a drink.
"You know, it's harder when you don't agree with everyone else," I answered.
We chuckled, I got my drink, and came back to write. Sadly, with my schedule, my rough draft is what gets turned in. I had Tia read over it for grammar mistakes (she found a couple) and then I submitted it. Tonight, I can think of some things that would have been worded better but the deadline for the assignment was noon and I was at work.
For those of you that are in the least bit curious, my whole take on the story is that there was no raven. That, in itself, was a symbol for the melancholy in the narrator's mind. All the analyses that I read took the raven to be a literal raven. 'Course I could be wrong but then I can't be wrong because we have to write what the poem says to *us* and then support that viewpoint with quotes from the text. It should come out okay. My last analysis earned a 95 out of 100.
As part of a lab for one of my classes, I have to follow a high school English teacher around for a day. I'll be doing that this Thursday (you know, because I have lots of time for this kind of thing). We emailed each other today and got it all set.
Guess what we'll be teaching? Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat. Interesting. In the last week, amongst my other reading, I have read Annabel Lee, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. Guess I'll be doing a little bit more reading on Poe before moving on to Civil War era writers.
Tonight, I have to right about 37 different topics that have to do with teaching and how case law has shaped all these different areas. I can tell you that this paper is going to be incredibly short-winded tonight because I also have to read about Modernism in art, then I have to figure out what Planar Recession is and why that's important to Modernism, and then I have to write up a lengthy critique my own art work submission and that of another student. I just found out that the art work that I thought I had to do tonight isn't actually due tonight and I'm breathing a huge sigh of relief because I think I'd turn back into the picked-on step-sister sooner than I'd finish all this work, which all has to be done before midnight.
And, with that, I'm going to dive back into case law for teachers.
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